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BV  4211  .B83  1896 

Burton,  Nathaniel  J.  1822 

1887. 
In  pulpit  and  parish 


gale  lectures  on  $reaci)tng- 


In  Pulpit  and  Parish 


BY 

NATHANIEL    J.    BURTON,    D.  D. 

Late  Pastor  of  Park  Church,  Hartford,  Conn. 


EDITED  BY 

RICHARD   E.  BURTON. 


WITH     MEMORIAL    ADDRESSES    BY 

Pres.   TIMOTHY    DWIGHT,   of  Yale   University. 
Rev.   J.   H.   TWICHELL,  of  Hartford,  Conn. 
Rev.   E.   P.   PARKER,  D.D.,  of   Hartford,  Conn. 


Congregational  H>tmtoap=H>cl)ooI  anB  publishing  ^>ocictp, 

BOSTON    and    CHICAGO. 
NEW    YORK.  MINNEAPOLIS.  SAN    FRANCISCO. 

1896. 


PREFACE. 


Of  the  Yale  Lectures  which  make  up  the  larger  part  of  this 
volume,  the  first  twelve  were  delivered  at  the  Yale  Theological 
Seminary,  in  the  year  1884  in  the  Lyman  Beecher  course  for  that 
year.  The  remaining  eight  were  delivered  in  the  years  1885  and 
1886,  as  especial  Lectures  outside  of  the  regular  course  above 
mentioned. 

It  is  the  aim  of  the  present  volume  to  present  selections  from 
the  miscellaneous  writings  of  the  author,  and  not  to  confine  the 
contents  to  sermons  alone,  in  which  department  he  was  best  known. 
There  remains  material  for  one  or  more  volumes  devoted  entirely 
to  pulpit  utterances  on  themes  organically  connected  in  subject  and 
treatment,  and  it  may  be  deemed  best  in  due  time,  to  prepare  such 
for  publication. 

The  manuscripts  of  Dr.  Burton  were  never  prepared  by  him 
for  publication ;  it,  therefore,  follows  that  many  changes  which  he 
would  inevitably  have  made  have  been  rendered  impossible.  In 
editing  his  works,  it  has  been  deemed  wise  to  err  on  the  side  of  a 
too  literal  retention  of  what  he  has  left,  rather  than  to  destroy  his 
strong  individuality  by  any  considerable  alteration. 

RICHARD   E.   BURTON. 

Johns  Hopkins  University,  April,  1888. 


CONTENTS. 


FUNERAL   ADDRESSES. 
President  Dwight's  Address    . 
Rev.  J.  H.  Twichell's  Address 
Rev.  Dr.  E.  P.  Parker's  Address  . 


Page. 
II 


YALE    LECTURES. 


The  Call  to  the  Ministry     . 
Making  Sermons 
Originality  in  the  Preacher 
Imagination  in  Ministers 
Imagination  in  Sermons 
Short  Sermons 

Extra- Parishional  Faithfulness 
Parish  Inconveniences    . 


31 
47 
64 
81 

97 
118 

i33 
151 


YALE   LECTURES. 

Page. 

Ceremonial  Occasions 169 

The  Right  Conduct  of  Public  Worship         .         .         .  187 

Liberty  of  Thought  Within  Congregationalism    .         .  205 

The  Vague  Elements  in  Language         .         .         .         .  222 

The  Service  of  Art  in  Religion  (I)               .         .         .  247 

The  Service  of  Art  in  Religion   (II)    .         .         .         .  266 

Order  in  Sermon  Topics 284 

Assimilation  of  Sermon  Material           ....  306 

Veracity  in  Ministers 326 

High-Heartedness  in  the  Ministry        .         .         .         .  351 

Legitimate  Elements  of  Variety  in  Church  Service     .  369 

Routine  :    its  Perils  and  its  Values       .         .         .         .  387 


ADDRESSES. 


Henry  Wilson 
Horace  Bushnell,  D.  D. 
James  A.  Garfield 
Leonard  Bacon,  D.  D.    . 
Fourth  of  July  Oration 


409 
4i7 
43° 

441 

45  2 


ESSAYS. 

Page. 

Worship 465 

The  Love  of  Truth 480 

Agnosticism 4S9 


SERMONS. 


The  Church  of  the  Living  God 509 


Life  a  Dream 


Modern  Inspiration         . 

The  Fellowship  of  Christ's  Sufferings 


The  Coming  of  Christ 


5r9 


The  Transit  of  Venus    .         .        .         .     '  .         .         .        5: 


539 

551 


Nature  Expressive  of  God  and  an  Instrument  of  Self- 

Expression  for  Man 564 


577 


Christ's  Supremacy  in  the  Heart  .         .        .         .        591 

Jesus  Weeping   over  Jerusalem   four   days   before   his 

Crucifixion 600 


FOREIGN    LETTERS. 

Extracts  from  Letters  Written  to  Hartford  Evening 

Post  in  the  years  1868  and  i860  .         .         .         611 


FUNERAL  ADDRESSES 

DELIVERED  AT  THE  FUNERAL 

i 

OF  THE 

Rev.  Dr.  BURTON, 

AT    THE    PARK    CHURCH,    HARTFORD,    CONN. 
October    17,    1887. 


ADDRESS 


President  TIMOTHY   DWIGHT, 


OF  YALE  UNIVERSITY. 


We  loved  him,  and  he  loved  us  : — it  is  with  this  thought  that 
we  meet  together  this  afternoon,  for  the  simple  and  impressive  service 
of  the  hour  before  us.  The  friend  whose  mortal  part  we  lay  tender- 
ly and  tearfully  in  its  peaceful  resting-place,  and  whose  immortal 
living  self  passes  to  a  larger,  grander  life  as  we  bid  him  farewell, 
was  a  common  friend  to  us  all.  Strangers  to  one  another,  it  may 
be  ;  having  our  homes  in  many  different  places  and  our  work  in 
many  different  lines ;  some  of  us  coming  into  this  time  of  sorrow 
from  the  joy  of  an  almost  daily  communion  in  thought  and  hope, 
and  others  recalling  to  our  remembrance  the  delightful  association 
of  earlier  or  later  years,  we  turn  our  footsteps  lovingly  to  this  con- 
secrated house  and  find  ourselves  united  in  a  bond  of  sympathy  as 
we  enter  within  its  doors.  The  spirit  of  the  dead,  yet  living,  friend 
seems  to  rest  upon  us  all.  We  look  upon  his  face  and  say  :  What  a 
large-minded,  large-hearted,  generous,  noble  man  he  was.  The 
world,  we  whisper  sadly  to  each  other,  has  lost  out  of  itself  for  us 
something  that  it  will  not  regain,  and  becomes  poorer  and  emptier 
to  our  thought  as  one  more  of  those,  whose  minds  and  souls  appear 
to  us  peculiarly  fitted  for  a  higher  life  than  this,  moves  onward  to 
another  sphere. 

What  more  shall  we  say  concerning  him  ?  Only  what  friends 
may  say  in  the  first  hour  of  separation  from  one  whom  they  remem- 
ber with  the  vividness  of  yesterday's  life,  and  whose  deepest  regret  is 


12  FUNERAL   ADDRESSES. 

that  they  are  to  see  his  face  no  more.  The  hour  for  a  record  of  our 
friend's  work  as  a  preacher  or  as  a  man,  or  for  a  picturing  of  his 
mind  and  character,  has  not  yet  come.  We  all  hope  that,  after  a 
brief  season,  some  friend  whose  intimate  acquaintance  wit?h  his 
daily  living  in  these  thirty  years  past  may  give  him  fitness  for  the 
task,  will  render  this  kindly  service  to  the  ministry  and  the  church. 
But  to-day  is  not  the  time  for  this.  To-day  is  consecrated  wholly 
to  sorrow  and  to  friendship,  and  we  tell  to-day  only  what  we  feel. 

Our  friend  has  always  seemed  to  me  to  be  equally  interesting 
in  mind  and  spirit,  and  to  be  wonderfully  interesting  in  both.  His 
mind  was  filled  with  delight  in  every  new  vision  of  truth  which 
opened  to  him.  He  seized  upon  the  truth  with  the  eagerness  of  a 
child  and  made  it  his  own  in  a  peculiar  sense,  as  compared  with 
most  of  the  men  whom  I  have  known.  The  moment  it  came  to 
him,  it  was  taken  up  and  transfigured,  as  it  were,  by  a  mysterious 
working  of  mental  power,  so  that  it  gained  a  freshness  and  a  beauty 
which  made  it  a  thing  of  life  and  joy.  It  continued,  also,  a  living 
thing.  It  did  not  remain  to-day  what  it  was  yesterday,  but  with 
each  new  morning,  as  we  might  almost  say,  it  presented  itself  in 
some  new  aspect,  and  thus  awakened  the  mind  to  see  within  it  a 
new  charm  and  a  new  blessing.  Thoughts  came  to  him  respecting 
it  as  sweetly  as  the  flowers  come  in  the  summer,  and  with  the  ex- 
haustless  fullness  of  a  fountain.  The  outlook  seemed  to  reach  ever 
farther  into  the  distance,  as  the  thoughts  were  richer  and  deeper, 
and  beyond  what  could  be  seen  by  the  utmost  stretch  of  present 
vision  there  was  a  greater  glory  to  inspire  and  allure  the  seeking 
mind  in  the  future.  The  constantly  arising  thoughts,  also,  seemed 
themselves  to  be  subjected  to  the  same  mysterious  process  of  which 
I  have  spoken.  They  were  filled  therefore  with  a  new  force,  or  took 
upon  themselves  a  fresh  coloring,  as  the  days  passed  on.  They  en- 
riched the  mind,  as  the  mind  by  its  own  vitalizing  energy  appeared 
to  enrich  them.  They  made  life  an  ever  fresh  and  ever  bright 
thing.  I  remember  hearing  him  say  once,  that  sometimes,  after  he 
had  been  thinking  upon  a  subject  in  the  evening  hours  without  find- 
ing it  open  itself  clearly  before  him,  he  would  lay  it  aside  and  fall 
asleep  for  the  night,  and  that,  when  he  waked  in  the  morning,  the 
thoughts  would  be  waiting  for  him  in  their  due  order  and  moving 
towards  the  light.  And  I  can  think  of  no  man  whom  I  know,  of 
whom  I  can  more  easily  believe  this.  His  ever  active  mind  we  can 
almost  picture  to  ourselves  as  restlessly  pressing  on  in  its  course 


FUNERAL   ADDRESSES.  13 

even  while  the  body  slept,  and  reaching  out  after  that  which  it 
might  gather  into  itself,  and  make  the  man  conscious  of,  when  the 
day  should  return.  As  a  man  thinketh,  so  is  he.  How  true  these 
words  of  Scripture  are,  not  only  in  the  sense  in  which  they  were  used 
by  the  sacred  writer,  but  in  other  views  of  them  also.  The  more 
happy  thoughts  a  man  has,  the  happier  is  his  life  ;  the  richer  his 
thoughts  are,  the  richer  his  life.  Surely  our  friend,  as  he  held  com- 
munion with  truth  and  with  his  own  mind,  must  have  realized  in 
himself  the  possession  of  a  true  happiness  and  wealth  which  few  men 
know  so  fully — a  happiness  which  none  who  have  experience  of  it 
would  change  for  the  best  of  the  outward  gifts  which  the  world  has 
to  bestow.  I  can  only  think  of  him  now,  and  in  the  coming  time, 
as  taking  every  new  revelation  of  truth  and  every  new  measure  of 
knowledge  into  his  mind,  as  he  was  wont  to  do  while  with  us  here — 
only  more  eagerly  and  more  confidently — and  as  turning  the  newly 
known  thing  or  the  truth  imparted  to  him  on  every  side  to  see  its 
own  beauty  or  its  fitness  in  relation  to  other  truths  and  things. 
Some  one  has  told  me  that  his  last  words,  as  the  shadows  of  the  un- 
seen came  suddenly  upon  him,  were,  What  is  this  ?  May  we  not 
believe  that  what  seemed  to  us  the  shadow  was  to  him  an  inbreak- 
ing  of  the  heavenly  light,  and  that  when  his  spirit  followed  the  voice 
that  called  him,  it  was  that  he  might  receive  an  answer  of  love  and 
of  truth  to  every  questioning  of  his  eager  mind?  The  other  life 
united  itself  closely  to  this  life  in  his  case.  We  cannot  doubt  the 
reality  of  the  other  life  as  we  see  him  passing  into  it,  and  we  cannot 
think  of  it,  as  it  seems  to  me,  except  as  bearing  him  forward  in  the 
fullness  of  happy  thoughts. 

But  his  spirit  was  as  interesting  as  his  mind.  He  had  a  rich, 
generous,  magnanimous  nature.  The  royal  generosity  of  his  soul 
affected  his  thinking  as  well  as  his  living,  his  living  as  well  as  his 
thinking.  He  was  free  in  his  thought.  But  he  never  moved  for- 
ward without  giving  due  weight  and  influence  to  what  lay  behind 
him.  If  he  turned  to  the  new,  he  did  so  with  tolerance  for  the  old, 
and  even  with  a  reverential  regard  for  it.  He  did  not  forget  the 
fathers'  thoughts,  while  he  was  moving  so  joyously  and  often  so 
boldly  onward  in  his  own.  He  was  a  man  who  grew  larger  and 
healthier  in  his  spirit,  in  this  regard,  as  he  grew  older,  and  therefore 
moved  safely  toward  the  truth,  rather  than  away  from  it.  He  was 
liberal  in  his  thinking,  because  he  was  generous  in  his  feeling.  He 
saw  what  was  good  on  every  side,  and  was  so  affectionate  towards 


14  FUNERAL   ADDRESSES. 

all  men  and  all  ideas,  that  he  could  not  be  bound  by  any  party  or 
limited  by  narrowness  of  any  sort.  I  once  heard  him  say  that  he 
could,  in  a  sense,  accept  any  Christian  creed,  whatever  minor  faults 
there  might  be  in  it,  because  he  liked  to  look  at  it  on  the  good  side 
and  in  the  large  way.  His  large-heartedness  refused  to  quarrel  with 
his  Christian  brother  because  of  the  little  differences.  It  rather  im- 
pelled him  to  sympathy  and  kindly  fellowship,  because  behind  and 
beneath  the  differences  lay  the  great  common  and  fundamental 
truths.  The  wideness  and  the  narrowness  of  Christian  thinking  are 
alike  safe  when  the  spirit  which  accompanies  the  thinking  is  like  his. 
And  so  I  suppose  that  no  man,  whatever  were  his  opinions,  ever 
looked  upon  him  as  an  enemy.  Indeed,  I  can  hardly  think  of  any 
two  combatants  engaged  in  angry  controversy  and  fierce  debate  as 
coming  into  his  presence  without  finding  their  hearts  beginning 
after  a  little  season  to  warm  towards  him,  and  even  towards  each 
other.  He  was  so  full  of  love  that  his  own  spirit  was  infused  into 
those  who  were  with  him,  and  even  unconsciously  to  himself  he  be- 
came a  peacemaker. 

How  generous  and  loving  he  was,1  also,  where  there  was  no  con- 
troversy. When  his  friends  or  his  brethren  in  the  ministry  met  to- 
gether, what  a  rich  influence  of  friendliness  and  good  feeling  and 
warm-hearted  appreciation  of  every  man  on  his  best  side  came  from 
his  very  presence  in  the  company.  No  matter  what  view  he  took 
of  any  question,  we  all  were  glad  to  hear  him  speak  and  we  all  found 
him  as  full  of  kindly  sentiments  at  all  times  as  we  could  ever  hope 
to  be  ourselves  at  any  time.  Wonderful  and  often  delightful  as  his 
humor  was,  there  was  no  sharpness  in  it  to  be  painful  to  another. 
It  was  the  play  of  a  generous  mind  rejoicing  in  its  own  thoughts  and 
wishing  joy  only  to  abide  in  the  thoughts  of  those  who  were  wit- 
nesses of  it.  He  had  the  tenderness  of  magnanimity  in  his  lighter 
moods,  as  in  his  more  serious  ones,  and  was  in  the  truest  sense  a 
friend  of  man.  The  humanity  of  a  large  soul  inspired  by  Christian 
love  was  manifest  in  him  to  every  one  who  knew  his  daily  life.  But 
his  generosity  of  nature  did  not  tend  towards  weakness.  Where 
truth  and  righteousness  were  concerned,  he  was  strong.  In  my  own 
relations  to  him  I  feel  deeply  the  loss  which  we  sustain  in  this  re- 
gard by  reason  of  his  death,  and  I  am  sure  that  many  others  who 
have  met  him  in  the  various  walks  and  works  of  life  share  in  the 
same  feeling.  He  was  a  large-minded  lover  of  the  truth  and  a  gen- 
erous defender  of  righteousness,  as  all  men  ought  to  be  ;  but  no  one 


FUNERAL   ADDRESSES.  15 

could  doubt  for  a  moment  that  he  was  an  earnest  defender  of  the 
one  and  an  ardent  lover  of  the  other.  What  a  striking  face  he  had 
— one  that  marked  him  as  a  man  of  power  in  any  assembly  where 
he  found  a  place.  As  he  rose  to  speak  in  such  an  assembly,  he  at- 
tracted attention  immediately.  But  the  impression  on  the  hearer, 
at  the  beginning,  was  always  that  a  true  man  was  before  him  ;  and,  at 
the  end,  the  same  impression  was  deepened  because  the  man,  had 
spoken  so  truly,  so  fearlessly,  and  yet  so  kindly  towards  all. 

The  Christian  life  grew  stronger  and  more  graceful  and  beauti- 
ful in  our  friend  as  the  years  carried  him  forward  in  his  course. 
The  members  of  this  church  to  which  he  ministered  in  sacred  things 
so  long  and  the  friends  who  met  him  in  the  intercourse  of  daily  life, 
and  with  the  interchange  of  thought  and  feeling,  will  bear  a  more 
full  testimony  to  this  than  is  possible  for  us  whose  home  has  been 
elsewhere.  But  the  witness  which  we  bear,  though  less  complete,  is 
no  less  confident  than  theirs.  I  have  myself  known  him  well  enough 
for  a  long  period  to  know  that  Christian  love  has  been  constantly 
penetrating,  more  and  more,  all  the  recesses  of  his  generous  soul 
with  its  heavenly  influence,  even  from  his  earlier  manhood  until  this 
latest  season.  The  richness  of  his  thinking,  the  tenderness  of  his 
feeling,  the  kindliness  of  his  spirit  towards  all  around  him,  the  earnest- 
ness of  his  working  for  the  good  of  men,  have  all  been  more  and 
more  infused  with  the  influence  of  a  living  faith  in  the  Divine  Mas- 
ter who  long  since  called  him  into  his  service  and  his  spiritual  king- 
dom. We  all  know  this  and  rejoice  to  know  it.  The  earthly  life 
ended  suddenly,  but  not  too  suddenly  for  his  soul's  highest  welfare. 
The  change  which  came  to  him  when  he  was  not  thinking  of  its 
nearness,  only  carried  him  into  another  place  of  living,  where  the 
things  which  he  had  prepared  himself  for,  and  had  hoped  some  day 
to  find  his  own,  were  waiting  for  him  to  enjoy  them  in  their  fullness. 
I  can  only  picture  him  to  myself  in  that  larger  life  as  becoming 
greater  and  better,  indeed,  but  as  still  the  same  man  whom  we 
knew — with  a  mind  full  of  rich  and  continually  new  thoughts,  with 
a  spirit  ever  joyful  in  the  fresh  discovery  of  God's  truth  and  God's 
love,  and  with  a  heart  so  overflowing  in  its  love  towards  all  that  the 
peace  which  passeth  understanding  must  come  to  it  evermore  as  a 
divine  benediction. 

But  why,  I  say  to  myself,  should  I  speak  even  these  few  words 
in  the  presence  of  the  two  friends  who  are  to  follow  me  and  who  can 
bring  a  testimony  and  an  offering  from  the  innermost  circle  of  an  al- 


16  FUNERAL   ADDRESSES. 

most  life-long  friendship  ?  It  is  more  fitting  that  I  should  be  silent 
here,  and  silently  bear  witness,  as  I  stand  beside  the  open  grave,  of 
my  own  pleasant  memories  of  the  friend  who  has  gone  from  us  and 
my  sympathy  for  those  who  were  nearest  to  his  heart.  And  yet  I 
ask  the  privilege  of  adding  one  word  more  to  those  which  have  been 
already  uttered  as  a  friendly  farewell.  When  I  heard  last  Thursday 
evening  of  our  friend's  sudden  death,  my  thoughts  turned  back- 
ward to  the  early  days,  when  he  and  I  and  the  men  of  our 
own  age  with  whom  we  lived  and  studied  began  our  work. 
We  seemed,  all  of  us,  as  the  vision  of  the  past  and  the  pres- 
ent rose  before  my  mind,  like  a  company  of  loving  friends  who  had 
long  since  started  on  a  journey  and  had  been  moving  forward 
through  sunshine  and  storm,  amid  hopes  and  fears,  with  sorrows  and 
joys  toward  the  realization  of  our  youthful  dreams.  Suddenly  on  a 
bright  morning  a  voice  came  out  of  the  sky,  and  one  of  the  company 
vanished  from  our  sight.  How  strange  it  seemed  that  we  could  see 
him  no  longer  !  But  the  voice  which  called  him  said  to  us  :  Move 
forward  still,  as  earnestly  and  hopefully  as  before.  One  and 
another  of  those  who  remain  will  be  called  after  a  season,  and  at 
the  last  the  realization  of  the  dreams  will  come — but  not  here.  The 
life  of  the  future  is  in  that  place  beyond  the  skies  to  which  this 
friend  of  your  early  days  has  just  been  summoned.  And  so  we 
moved  onward  as  manfully  and  hopefully  as  we  could,  and  we  said 
to  one  another,  as  we  left  the  sorrowful  place  and  hour  of  our  part- 
ing from  him  who  had  been  taken  from  us  :  Surely  there  is  joy  for  us 
in  the  time  to  come ;  for  we  may  bear  with  us  ever  the  remem- 
brance that  he  loved  us  and  we  loved  him,  and  in  the  memory  of 
this  and  every  other  pure  earthly  love,  which  gathers  into  itself 
somewhat  of  the  heavenly,  we  may  find  the  promise  of  the   future. 


ADDRESS 

BY 

Rev.  JOSEPH    H.  TWICHELL, 

OF  HARTFORD,  CONN. 


One  called,  as  I  am  now,  to  speak  of  a  man  long  and  dearly- 
beloved  in  the  relation  of  private  intimacy  and  but  just  gone, 
hesitates  to  follow  his  impulse  and  say  the  things  that  come  to  him 
first  and  ask  to  be  said,  least  he  seem  to  speak  overmuch  of  him- 
self. For  naturally  and  inevitably  in  such  a  case,  the  thoughts  and 
feelings  that  rise  uppermost,  and  with  which  one  is  preoccupied, 
are  prevailingly  personal. 

Yet,  what  else  can  you  do  ?  And  perhaps,  after  all,  it  will  be  not 
so  entirely  amiss.  For  I  do  not  know  but  that  one  to  whom  on 
personal  grounds  this  is  an  occasion  of  love  and  sorrow,  uttering 
his  own  heart,  is  as  likely  so  to  utter  the  general  heart  as  any  way. 

If  I  eulogize  Dr.  Burton  here  to-day,  it  is  because  eulogy  is  the 
word  that  is  in  my  tongue.  And  it  does  but  represent  the  habit 
of  my  thoughts  and  the  habit  of  my  speech  about  him  these  many 
years.  Again,  if  in  the  few  minutes  allotted  to  me,  I  pass  by  many 
things  and  even  most  things  that  are  in  the  public  mind  concerning 
him,  all  that  made  us  as  a  community,  and  each  one  of  us,  proud 
of  him,  it  is  because  the  things  in  him  now  most  present  to  me  are 
those  that  made  me  reverence  and  love  him. 

Twenty- five  years  ago  this  past  summer  I  was  up  from  the  Army 
of  the  Potomac  and  spending  a  Sunday  in  Hartford.  It  had  been 
a  good  while  since  it  had  been  my  privilege  to  partake  of  the  Holy 
Communion,  and  I    greatly  desired  to  do  so.     Upon    inquiry   I 


18  FUNERAL  ADDRESSES. 

learned  that  that  was  Communion  Sunday  in  the  Fourth  church. 
So  thither  I  repaired,  and  so  it  came  to  pass  that  the  first  time  I 
ever  saw  Brother  Burton  was  at  the  Lord's  table ;  and  that  the 
first  act  that  ever  passed  between  us  was  the  ministering  on  his 
part,  and  the  receiving  on  mine,  of  the  sacrament  of  Divine  Love 
and  Christian  Fellowship.  Though  I  was  an  entire  stranger  I  went 
up  to  him  after  the  service  and  spoke  with  him.  And  then,  for  the 
first  time,  I  looked  in  his  eye  and  saw  the  light  of  his  smile,  and 
heard  the  brother-tone  in  his  voice ;  little  thinking  what  of 
cheer  and  heart's  delight  were  in  store  for  me  in  after  years  from 
that  eye,  that  smile,  that  voice  ;  little  thinking  that  to  miss  them 
would  one  day  bring  me  into  such  sorrow. 

But  I  can  say,  and  do  say,  that  the  whole  story  of  those  after 
years,  as  relates  to  him  and  me,  has  been  answerable  to  that  begin- 
ning. He  has  given  and  I  have  received.  I  have  been  partaker 
of  the  free  hospitalities  of  his  wealthy  and  generous  spirit.  All  ye 
to  whom  he  was  wont  so  long  to  break  the  Bread  and  pour  out  the 
Cup  of  the  Sacred  Feast,  and  who  are  now  in  grief  because  he  is  your 
minister  no  more,  be  sure  there  are  many  of  us  who  are  in  the  fellow- 
ship of  that  grief,  for  he  was  our  minister  too.  And  there  is  no  one 
left  who  can  be  to  us  what  he  was,  who  can  do  for  us  what  he  did. 

What  I  am  most  moved  to  say — to  testify — at  this  time  is,  that 
the  man  whose  body  lies  before  us  was  one  of  the  best  men,  one  of 
the  most  Christian  men  that  God,  who,  in  the  ordering  of  my  lot,  has 
given  me  to  know  many  good  men,  has  ever  made  me  acquainted 
with.  And  that  I  have  long  been  accustomed  both  to  judge  and  to 
say.  Nor,  I  feel  like  saying,  though  I  am  aware  that  it  is  my  feel- 
ing that  dictates  it,  was  there  ever,  or  could  be,  a  more  utterly 
lovable  man  than  he.  And  this  on  account  of  his  own  great  and 
wonderful  gift  and  power  of  loving;  and  of  loving  with  that 
supreme  kind  of  love  that  St.  Paul  depicts  in  the  thirteenth  chapter 
of  the  First  Epistle  to  the  Corinthians.  Each  separate  lineament 
of  it  was  reproduced  in  him.  Whoever  came  to  know  him  came 
into  the  atmosphere  of  it  and  perceived  it.  The  generosities,  for- 
bearances, forgivenesses,  unselfish  humilities,  the  magnanimities  all 
round,  that  are  so  hard  to  most  of  us,  and  that  it  is  a  victory  to 
practice,  appeared  to  be  easy  to  him.  His  spirit  was  always  sweet 
with  the  fragrance  of  good  will. 

He  was  not  a  soft  man.  He  was  capable  of  vast  indignation 
and  deep  wrath,  for  cause.     But  he  was  incapable  of  animosity,  or 


FUNERAL  ADDRESSES.  19 

grudge,  or  resentment,  or  envy,  or  of  a  petty  feeling  of  any  sort 
toward  a  fellow  man  under  any  circumstances. 

No,  not  incapable.  He  would  have  earnestly  forbidden  that  to 
be  said.  He  was  a  completely  conscientious  man.  I  find  that 
nothing  has  been  more  impressed  upon  me  than  that ;  not  even  his 
beautiful  and  universal  magnanimity.  He  might  not,  indeed,  do 
what  another  person  thought  he  ought  to  do,  but  what  he  thought 
he  ought  to  do,  what  he  saw  was  right,  that  he  did,  and  no  matter 
what  it  was.  As  the  result  of  knowing  him  well  you  felt  that  here 
was  a  man  who  doubtless  would  die,  if  it  came  to  that,  rather  than 
do  a  wrong  thing.  My  certain  conviction  that  that  was  true  of  him 
bred  in  me,  as  time  went  on,  a  respect  for  him  that  was  immeasura- 
ble. And  this  integrity  he  carried  as  unaffectedly  and  easily  as  he 
did  his  charity.  Yet  whenever  anything  occurred  to  give  you  an 
insight  of  his  judgment  of  himself,  you  were  moved  to  discover 
how  lowly  minded  he  was.  I  once  heard  him  say  that  every  time 
he  read  a  fresh  story  of  crime  in  the  papers  he  acknowledged  to 
himself  that  it  was  not  a  thing  inconceivable  that  he  should  have 
committed  that  crime.     I  heard  him  say  that — dear  Burton. 

Naturally  and  without  his  effort  as  the  nobilities  of  his  dis- 
position seemed  to  reside  in  him,  and  much  as  nature  may  have 
contributed  to  them,  they  were  spiritual  graces,  his  second  nature, 
the  mark  and  work  of  Christ  in  him.  And  they  were  rooted  in  the 
very  depths  of  his  being  :  they  were  the  man. 

Last  July  he  told  me  a  thing  about  himself  that  I  never  shall 
forget.  It  was  the  third  day  after  the  accident  that  befell  him,  in  a 
conversation  in  which  he  gave  me  an  account  of  it.  He  said  that 
when  he  came  out  of  the  insensibility  produced  by  the  fall  he  had, 
and  regained  consciousness,  his  first  impression  was  that  he  was 
mortally  hurt.  That  thought,  however,  did  not  discompose  him  in 
the  slightest  degree.  "  For,"  he  said,  "  dying  is  an  affair  I  have 
discounted  for  a  good  while  " — that  was  his  precise  expression — 
"and  it's  nothing  I'm  anxious  about" — or  something  like  that. 
But,  he  went  on  to  relate,  this  marvelous  thing  happened  :  there 
rose  in  him  right  there  at  that  moment  the  surge,  the  flood  of  an 
all,  all-inundating  tide  of  unspeakable,  yearning  affection  that  swept 
out  in  measureless  universal  overflow  toward  all  objects  of  affection 
whatsoever, — the  friend  who  was  with  him,  the  people  who  pres- 
ently rendered  him  assistance,  everybody  he  thought  of,  all  the 
world.     It  was  not  in  words  to  describe  it.     It  had  been  a  great 


20  FUNERAL  ADDRESSES. 

experience  and  blessed  beyond  conception.  And  by  and  by  he 
imparted — which  was  a  strange  thing  for  him  to  do,  for  he  was  a 
man  of  much  reserve  on  the  subject  of  his  interior  life ;  his  doing 
it  showed  what  an  immense  experience  it  had  been, — what  a  sense 
of  it  remained  with  him ;  and  how  glad  I  am  he  did  it, — he  im- 
parted his  interpretation  of  it.  "Wasn't  it,"  he  said,  "the  most 
fundamental  thing  in  me  coming  to  the  surface  under  pressure  of  a 
great  emergency?"  Of  course  it  was.  It  was  a  pulse  of  eternal 
life  ;  a  waft  from  heaven.  There  was  a  heart  that  would  bear  dis- 
closing to  the  bottom.  Its  deepest  passions  were  its  purest. 
Certainly  they  were,  for  they  were  the  offsprings  of  his  Christian 
faith  and  lived  from  it. 

What  a  believer  he  was  !  He  was  free  in  his  faith.  He  bor- 
rowed it  from  no  man.  It  was  his  very  own.  He  was  honest  as 
the  day.  His  mind  was  perfectly  open.  He  was  not  afraid  to 
think.  He  looked  on  all  sides.  Toward  those  differing  with  him 
in  opinion  he  was  toleration  itself.  And  he  was  a  Christian 
believer  with  his  whole  heart.  He  was  born  a  poet  and  was 
endowed  with  a  spiritual  imagination  that  gave  him  a  free  wing  in 
the  upper  regions  of  thought.  We  often  sat  spell-bound  to  watch 
his  flight.  He  could  mount  up  to  meet  and  commune  with  the 
heavenly  revelation  as  far  as  any  man  we  have  known  or  shall 
know.  But  it  was  the  least  of  his  concern  with  the  truths  of 
religion  that  they  were  a  congenial  field  in  which  to  exercise  his 
splendid  powers.  To  be  near  him,  near  enough  to  make  his  moral 
acquaintance,  was  to  discover  that  the  practical  fact  of  this  universe 
to  him  personally  was  Jesus  Christ,  the  Lord  and  Saviour  who  died 
and  rose  again. 

He  was  characteristically  so  unconventional  in  his  ways  and 
expressions  that  to  a  casual,  outside  observation  this  might  not 
appear.  But  when  you  got  close  to  him,  there  it  was,  quite  unmis- 
takable. You  saw,  by  one  token  and  another,  it  was  witnessed  to 
you,  and  continually  witnessed,  that  faith  in  Christ  was  the  ground 
under  his  feet,  and  on  which  he  was  living  his  life  ;  that  the  solid 
realities  of  existence  to  him  were  the  Gospel  realities.  When  he 
said  that  dying  was  an  event  he  cared  not  for,  he  meant — that  was 
my  construction  of  it  at  the  time — that  he  had  put  his  hand  into 
Christ's,  and  therefore  was  in  the  rest  of  an  absolute  confidence 
respecting  what  awaited  him  when  he  should  pass  the  mortal 
boundary. 


FUNERAL   ADDRESSES.  21 

Oh,  what  enthusiasms  he  had  on  the  high  themes  of  the  faith  ! 
What  seasons  of  rapt  converse  with  its  solemn,  joyful  mysteries  ! 
His  people  will  remember  on  how  many  Sundays  after  Easter,  two 
years  ago,  he  continued  to  speak  to  them  of  the  Resurrection,  turning 
the  subject  every  way,  exploring  it  in  every  direction.  He  told  me 
then  that  he  was  not  able  to  get  away  from  it ;  that  it  held  him  by 
a  resistless  fascination.  And  he  said  that  while  he  pondered  it, 
week  after  week,  there  were  hours  when  he  could  scarcely  restrain 
himself  from  crying  out,  so  mightily  was  his  spirit  moved  with  the 
sense  of  the  glory  of  the  things  it  was  given  faith  to  know,  and  so 
intense  the  ardor  of  longing  that  seized  him  to  know  more.  Oh, 
dear,  true,  loving,  guileless,  believing,  rejoicing,  hungering  soul ; 
how  good  and  precious  a  gift  from  God  it  has  been  to  share  thy 
riches  with  thee  !  He  had  a  genius  for  friendship,  and  an  exhaust- 
less  capacity  for  it.  And  none,  I  may  be  permitted  to  say,  had 
more  reason  to  know  this  than  we,  his  brethren  in  the  ministry. 
None  had  more  occasion  to  prove  it.  How  wide  he  opened  the 
arms  of  his  sympathy  to  us  !  He  took  us  all  in,  and  there  was  room 
for  us  all  in  his  big  heart.  And  now  by  his  removal  God  has  taken 
away  our  head,  and  we  are  sorely,  very  sorely,  bereaved. 

There's  nothing  whatsoever  about  him  that  we  remember,  and 
shall  remember,  as  we  do  certain  things  that  at  one  time  and 
another  opened  to  our  view  the  depths  of  his  affection.  I  recall, 
for  instance,  the  scene — and  there  are  others  here  who  will  recall 
it — when  after  Dr.  Bushnell,  at  a  meeting  of  the  Ministerial  Asso- 
ciation to  which  he  belonged,  had  read  a  sermon,  of  which  he  said, 
before  he  began,  that  it  was  probably  the  last  sermon  he  should 
ever  write,  and  it  came  Burton's  turn  to  pass  judgment  upon  it,  how 
after  an  ineffectual  struggle  to  say  something,  he  paused  an  instant, 
and  then  lifted  up  his  voice  and  wept.  Sweet  must  be  the  reunions 
of  heaven  prepared  by  such  a  love  !  How  little  a  while  it  seems — 
how  little  a  while  it  is — since  he  stood  here  where  I  stand,  and  we 
heard  from  his  lips — those  silent  lips  yonder — in  such  words  as 
only  he  could  speak,  the  farewell  in  anticipation  of  which  he  that 
day  wept.  Nor  are  there  any  words  anywhere  that  I  know  of — 
certainly  none  that  I  can  frame — that,  to  my  feeling,  are  so  fit  for 
this  hour,  that  so  perfectly  express  the  thought  toward  himself 
that  is  now  in  my  heart,  and  in  all  our  hearts,  as  his  closing  words 
on  that  occasion.     Let  me  repeat  them  : 

"  What  a  mind,"  he  said,  "  his  must  be  to  enter  heaven  and 


22  FUNERAL   ADDRESSES. 

start  out  upon  its  broad-winged  ranges,  its  meditations  and  dis- 
coveries, its  transfigurations  of  thought  and  feeling,  its  eternal 
enkindlings  of  joy  as  the  mysteries  of  redemption  unfold  !  I  look 
forward  with  immense  expectation  to  a  meeting  again  with  this  man 
in  his  resurrection  life.  I  want  to  see  Horace  Bushnell  in  his 
glorified,  immortal  body,  and  note  the  movements  of  that  mighty 
genius  and  that  manful  and  most  Christian  soul  thus  clothed  upon 
and  unhindered.  "  Meanwhile,  and  until  then,  farewell.  O  master 
in  Israel,  O  man  beloved.  .  .  .  God  bring  us  to  thee  when  the 
eternal  morning  breaks  !  "  So  do  I  bid  thee  farewell,  and  so  say 
I  of  thee,  Nathaniel  Burton,  to  whom  that  morning  has  come,  and 
whose  expectation  God  has  now  fulfilled. 


ADDRESS 


Rev.  Dr.  E.  P.  PARKER, 


OF  HARTFORD,  CONN. 


It  has  been  my  privilege  to  live  in  an  intimacy  of  both 
ministerial  and  personal  fellowship  with  Dr.  Burton  for  more  than  a 
quarter  of  a  century.  Nevertheless  I  find  it  difficult  to  describe 
him,  nor  does  my  heart-ache  at  his  loss  diminish  the  difficulty.  He 
was  a  great,  good,  dear  soul,  but  strange  and  mysterious.  He  was  so 
large  and  manifold  in  his  manhood,  so  unique  in  many  respects,  so 
rich  in  a  diversity  of  gifts  whose  exercise  was  strangely  limited  here 
and  there,  so  reticent  and  reserved  concerning  much  that  was  funda- 
mental in  his  personality,  so  abundant  in  resources  lying  back  in 
the  unexplorable  interior  of  his  nature,  and  so  paradoxical  at  certain 
points  of  mind  and  character  that  any  account  of  him  given  here 
must  be  inadequate. 

But  we  are  not  here  for  nice  discriminations,  least  of  all  for 
that  result  of  analysis  which  gives  us  "  for  the  real  Caesar  the  ashes 
of  Caesar's  urn."  Nearly  twenty-eight  years  ago  I  first  met  him  and 
was  at  once  drawn  to  him  as  if  magnetically.  He  had  already  made 
some  stir  in  Hartford  and  many  good  people  in  the  churches 
regarded  him  with  suspicion  and  alarm  as  being  an  eccentric  and 
heretical  genius.  It  is  true  that  he  had  changed  since  then,  but 
chiefly  in  the  way  of  growth  and  development.  But  what  a  change 
in  the  atmosphere  of  Hartford  since  he  was  classed  by  prominent 
church  members  with  Theodore  Parker  !  and  this  change  is  in  great 
measure  due  to  that  same  Nathaniel  J.  Burton.     More  than  many 


24  FUNERAL  ADDRESSES. 

have  suspected,  his  fragrance  of  character,  his  luminous  life,  and 
the  breadth  and  wisdom  of  his  teaching  have  operated  to  expand 
and  ennoble  the  religious  thought,  and  faith,  and  fellowship  of  our 
people. 

Dr.  Burton's  physical  form  in  these  latter  years  symbolized 
about  as  well  as  flesh  and  blood  could — the  real  manhood  within  it. 
It  fitted  him  well.  It  was  ample,  stalwart  and  substantial.  From 
head  to  foot  there  was  no  sign  of  narrowness  or  infirmity.  His 
brain  required  a  noble  expansion  and  out-building  of  the  forehead, 
and  the  jutting  eyebrows  were  just  bushy  enough  to  make  his  large, 
deep,  liquid  and  wonderful  eyes  remind  one  of  oriel  windows  over- 
hung with  ivy  and  opening  into  sacred  precincts  full  of  glooms  and 
glories.  There  was  something  both  formidable  and  fascinating  in 
his  resolute  attitudes,  his  movements  were  those  of  vigorous  ease, 
his  manners  were  dignified  and  gentle  and  his  aspect  in  general  was 
grave  and  majestic,  yet  winsome  withal.  There  was  a  striking 
resemblance  between  some  features  of  his  face  and  that  of  Haw- 
thorne, whom  he  otherwise  resembled,  and  his  voice  was  rich  and 
resonant  and  full  of  all  best  musical  qualities.  And  so  a  good  deal 
of  what  was  in  him  was  revealed  in  his  visible  and  audible  being. 

The  manifold,  marvelous,  intellectual  endowment  of  this  man 
deeply  impressed  all  who  came  within  the  sphere  of  his  influence. 
Magnificent  as  much  of  his  work  was,  he  never  seemed  to  be 
putting  forth  more  than  a  part  of  his  power,  never  seemed  desirous 
to  complete  or  perfect  his  work.  He  impressed  one  with  the  almost 
boundless  possibilities  of  his  mind,  and  with  the  great  diversity  of  his 
powers.  He  had  a  metaphysical  subtlety  like  that  in  Hawthorne. 
He  was  capable  of  great  oratory.  He  had  bubbling  springs  of  spark- 
ling humor.  He  might  have  written  essays  that  would  have  given  him 
a  permanent  place  in  literature.  He  was  pre-eminently  a  poet.  He 
may  have  made  no  rhymes,  but  some  such  poetry  as  one  reads  in 
Jeremy  Taylor  and  John  Milton's  prose  was  commonly  heard  both 
in  his  discourse  and  conversation.  He  never  tired  of  describing 
the  imagination  as  the  royal  faculty  of  the  human  mind,  the  original 
and  creative  part  of  it,  and  Dr.  Burton's  mind  was  pre-eminently, 
essentially  imaginative.  It  was  even  luxuriantly,  tropically  so.  He 
not  only  spoke  but  thought  pictorially.  If  here  and  there  his 
rhetoric  seemed  audacious,  gorgeous  or  grotesque,  so  is  the  flying 
buttress  of  York  Minster  bold,  so  are  some  of  its  windows  gorgeous, 
so  are  its  gargoyles  and  misereres  grotesque.     His  mind  was  gothic, 


FUNERAL  ADDRESSES.  25 

cathedral-like,  and  all  its  rhetorically  sculptured  expressions  so 
various  and  beautiful,  from  gloomy  crypt  to  top-most  pinnacles 
among  the  stars,  were  the  natural  and  yet  artistic  efflorescence  of  its 
substantia]  thought. 

In  discourse  upon  congenial  themes  he  seemed  to  be  chanting 
rather  than  reading  or  speaking,  his  periods  became  cadences,  and 
what  a  music  there  was  then  of  voice  melodious  and  mellifluous 
phrase  !  And  underneath  and  through  it  all  the  Orphic  music  of 
masterly  thought,  in  obedience  to  whose  influence  vocalization 
became  intonation,  sentences  became  rhythmical,  and  all  his  forth- 
trooping  figures,  in  russet  or  in  purple,  took  their  places  at  once,  as 
in  a  processional  order  and  array.  There  were  full-flowing  streams 
of  it,  like  Jeremy  Taylor  or  Mendelssohn  j  long  ocean  waves  of  it 
rolling  on  to  a  far-off  climax,  like  Milton  or  Bach ;  startling  origi- 
nalities and  crashing  discords  of  it,  as  in  Carlyle  or  Liszt ;  sudden 
explosions  of  it,  too,  that  soon  sent  forth  showers  of  golden  spray, 
as  in  Ruskin  or  Wagner  ;  but  it  was  always  great  thinking,  grandly 
expressing  itself  or  endeavoring  to  do  so,  orchestral-wise  or  as  by 
minster-choirs  and  organs. 

How  often  have  we  seen  him  as,  touched  in  his  solemn 
musings  by  some  taper-like  suggestion,  he  broke  forth  into  full- 
flaming  fire  of  speech.  His  preparations  seemed  always  complete. 
I  see  him  now  as,  challenged  by  some  breezy  strain  of  remark,  he 
weighs  anchor  and  gets  underway  in  the  deep-sea  course  of 
thought,  sail  after  sail,  fore  and  aft,  below  and  aloft,  shaken  out  and 
set  to  catch  the  gales  of  inspiration,  till  all  his  white  wings  are 
spread  and  he  plows  his  furrow  through  the  main  so  swiftly  and 
majestically!  Could  anything  be  more  beautiful?  And  at  such 
times  they  that  heard  him — and  often  they  were  few  in  number — 
"  looking  steadfastly  on  him,  saw  his  face,  as  it  had  been  the  face  of 
an  angel." 

The  amazing  fertility  of  his  mind,  no  less  than  its  originality, 
marked  him  as  a  man  of  genius.  Like  such  peers  as  Bushnell  and 
Beecher,  and  Brooks,  he  was  not  so  much  troubled  to  find  subjects 
as  to  select  from  those  that  thronged  his  mind.  Only  the  man  of 
genius  has  this  comprehensive  and  easy  grasp  of  great  subjects. 
He  often  reminded  me  in  his  lighter  intellectual  moments  of  some 
great  leviathan  lazily  but  gracefully  disporting  himself  in  his  native 
deep.  In  his  case  there  was  no  pecking  or  nibbling  at  truths. 
They  were  taken  up,  turned  about,  handled  with  reverent  familiar- 
3 


26  FUNERAL  ADDRESSES. 

ity,  opened  and  disclosed  with  least  possible  delay  or  fumbling. 
There  was  something  oceanic  in  his  breadth  and  depth,  in  varying 
moods  that  never  seemed  petty,  in  his  large  placidities  and 
tumultuous  perturbations.  He  saw  the  other  sides  and  aspects 
of  things,  believed  in  that  unity  which  comes  of  comparing 
and  combining  various  views,  and  put  his  emphatic  veto  on  all 
narrowness  and  exclusiveness.  If  he  took  Calvinism  on  board  his 
train,  he  took  along  with  it  many  other  qualifying  things,  and  the 
whole  train  ran,  as  by  predestination,  on  the  unalterable  lines  of  the 
broadest  gauge. 

One  noted  in  him,  as  in  Scripture,  apparent  paradoxes  of 
doctrine  that  had  their  harmony  in  higher  truths — hemispheres 
sundered  in  map-statements  that  are  one  sphere  in  reality.  He  was 
orthodox  and  heretical,  conservative  and  progressive,  broad,  high 
and  low  churchman,  Calvinist  in  dogma,  but  Christian  in  spirit  and 
Catholic  in  truth.  And  with  all  his  fine  speculative  and  large  imagi- 
native powers  there  went  hand  in  hand  a  cool  common  sense,  a  clear 
sagacity  and  an  excellent  judgment  in  the  practical  affairs  of  this  life. 

Touching  briefly  now  Dr.  Burton's  naturally  robust  and  highly 
spiritualized  character  as  we  knew  it  after  many  years  of  faithful 
self-discipline  under  the  tutelage  of  Divine  grace,  what  a  strong, 
massive,  beautiful  character  it  is,  on  the  whole  !  It  looms  up  in 
loftier  grandeur  and  symmetry  than  ever  before  in  the  twilight 
beyond  which  he  has  suddenly  vanished.  Distinguishing  his 
natural  characteristics  from  his  natural  temperament,  I  should  say 
that  in  the  former,  Divine  grace  had  splendid  materials  wherewith 
to  fashion  a  glorious  manhood  in  the  likeness  of  Christ,  and  in  the 
latter,  some  considerable  and  unusual  hindrances.  As  Christianity 
found  the  centurion  of  Capernaum  a  just,  devout,  and  faithful  man, 
so  it  found  Dr.  Burton  with  all  the  natural  elements  of  a  great  and 
good  character.  It  found  him  constitutionally  reverent,  sincere, 
true,  courageous,  kind,  loving,  and  open  to  conviction  on  every 
side.  How  it  wrought  in  him  with  these  materials,  you  know. 
There  were  thunders  and  lightnings  in  his  law.  There  was  self- 
sacrifice  and  abiding  love.  There  was  inflexibility  in  his  righteous- 
ness, there  was  no  bound  to  his  tender  mercy.  He  was  immovably 
fixed  in  the  great  immutabilities  of  God's  truth,  but  there  was  never 
a  heart  more  tremulous  with  over-brimming  human  sympathy. 

He  did  "let  brotherly  kindness  continue."  How  quickly,  at  a 
word,  those  mournful,  tender  eyes  became  dewy  with  tears.     How 


FUNERAL  ADDRESSES.  27 

suddenly,  sometimes,  under  an  inner  emotion  of  his  own  thought, 
those  firm  lips  quivered  and  grew  silent.  He  could  not  utter  the 
love  that  surged  within  him.  For  that  love  was  no  brook  babbling 
over  its  shallows,  but  a  well,  like  Jacob's,  full  of  living  water  of 
which  Jew  and  Samaritan  might  drink  freely, — only,  one  must  needs 
have  something  to  draw  with,  for  the  well  was  deep. 

Susceptible  in  an  unusual  degree  to  the  mysteries  encompassing 
us  all,  mystic  in  his  piety  and  delighting  in  the  large  vagueness  of 
revelation  rather  than  in  the  small  compass  of  definitions,  he  stood 
four-square  to  all  the  winds  that  blew,  but  not  blown  about  by 
every  wind  of  doctrine.  He  had  rooted  convictions  that  were 
ineradicable,  and  the  courage  of  them.  I  think  he  dared  look  any- 
thing, mortal  or  immortal,  fairly  in  the  face.  "What  is  it?"  he 
exclaimed — with  the  pallor  of  death  on  his  face  ;  but  I  am  sure  he 
was  not  afraid  if  he  saw  Death  looking  him  there  in  the  face. 
That  courage  was  one  of  the  noblest  traits  in  his  character. 

As  to  his  natural  temperament  there  was  a  strain  of  something 
unusually  if  not  abnormally  sad  in  it,  by  virtue  of  which  rather  than 
because  of  uncommon  outward  afflictions,  he  was,  on  the  whole, 
"  a  man  of  sorrows  and  acquainted  with  grief." 

Men  marked  the  sunshine  in  him,  the  substantial  sanity,  the 
rare  humor,  the  tumultuous  mirthfulness,  the  almost  riotous  play 
of  sportive  feelings  at  times,  but  there  were  deep,  dark  recesses  of 
his  nature,  into  which  few  could  look.  There  were  mournful  possi- 
bilities therein,  great  billowy  emotions  and  perturbations.  And 
therefrom  arose  into  his  sky,  heavy,  overhanging  clouds,  making 
obstinate,  gloomy  depressions  of  mind  and  spirit.  In  these  long 
seasons  of  thick  weather  and  storm  he  held  his  course,  but  as  baffled 
and  impeded.  Partly,  perhaps,  in  other  reasons,  but  chiefly,  as  I 
think,  in  reasons  grounded  in  this  fact,  the  well-known  limitations 
of  Dr.  Burton's  genius  have  their  explanation.  Here  was  a  clog  on 
his  ambition  and  enthusiasm,  an  embarrassment  of  his  expression,  a 
check  to  his  apparent  aggressiveness,  an  insurmountable  bar  to  the 
full  outpouring  of  his  great  mind  and  heart,  and  the  secret  of  his 
strange  and  sudden  shrinkings  from  prominence  and  publicity,  and 
of  his  frequent  abandonments  of  half-finished  tasks. 

Dear  soul !  He  never  knew  how  many  loved  him,  nor  how 
much.  He  could  not  be  made  to  believe  how  much  good  he  was 
doing,  and  though  he  believed  in  the  bright  side  of  things  with  all 
his  faith,  he  saw  the  dark  side,  and  it  had  a  mournful  fascination  for 


28  FUNERAL   ADDRESSES. 

him.  He  stood  peering  out  into  the  dark,  questioning  it,  until  the 
shadow  fell  athwart  his  way  and  wrapped  him  in  its  silence  and 
solitude.  Do  not  suppose  that  for  all  this  Dr.  Burton  was  like  Mr. 
Fearing  or  Mr.  Despondency  of  Bunyan's  story.  One  might  as  well 
liken  him  to  Mr.  Feeble-Mind.  No!  he  was  rather  like  "Old 
Honest,"  and  still  more  like  Mr.  Valiant-For-Truth,  and  still  more 
like  Great-Heart,  prince  and  leader  of  that  pilgrim  band,  and  like 
them,  often  "played  upon  the  well-tuned  cymbal  and  harp  for  joy." 

We  leaned  on  him  and  loved  him  as  those  pilgrims  regarded 
their  Great-Heart  soldier  and  leader.  He  has  gone  yonder,  I 
suppose,  because  his  Master  had  need  of  him  there — and  "  was  not 
willing  that  he  should  be  so  far  from  Him  any  longer." 

Our  music  is  hushed  into  low  and  mournful  strains  because  of 
his  departure,  but  all  the  trumpets  of  the  ransomed  in  heaven 
surely  sounded  for  him  on  the  other,  brighter  shore.  Let  us  not 
fail  to  listen  and  catch  the  echoes  of  those  victorious  notes  of 
welcome  and  be  comforted  concerning  him.  He  has  simply  ceased 
to  be  seen  of  us.  That  is  sorrow  enough  and  hard  to  bear.  But  he 
has  gone  up  into  the  Holy  City  through  the  beautiful  gate  that  opens 
over  all  graves,  and  we  can  but  rejoice  for  and  with  our  Great- 
Heart,  and  follow  his  path  of  translation  with  mingled  tears  and 
joy,  lamentations  and  thanksgivings,  prayers  for  consolation  and 
praises  of  divine  wisdom  and  love. 

Dr.  Bushnell  and  Dr.  Burton  !  Have  they  met  once  more  in 
that  clear  and  holy  light,  in  that  land  of  health  and  holiness  !  And 
what  a  meeting  that  has  been  !  Master  and  disciple  in  the  presence 
of  their  common  Master  ! 

"  Now  I  saw  in  my  dream  that  these  two  men  went  into  the 
gate,  and  lo  !  as  they  entered  they  were  transfigured ;  they  had 
raiment  put  on  that  shone  like  gold,  and  crowns  were  given  them 
in  token  of  honor ;  and  all  the  bells  in  the  City  rang  again  for  joy, 
and  it  was  said  unto  them,  '  Enter  ye  into  the  joy  of  our  Lord,'  and 
as  the  gates  were  opened  to  let  them  in,  I  looked  in  after  them  and, 
behold  !  the  City  shone  like  the  sun  ....  and  in  the  streets 
walked  many  men  with  crowns  on  their  heads,  palms  in  their 
hands,  and  harps  to  sing  praises  withal  ....  And  after  that 
they  shut  up  the  gates ; — which,  when  I  had  seen,  I  wished  myself 
among  them." 


YALE  LECTURES. 


THE  CALL  TO  THE  MINISTRY. 


My  Brethren,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  men  go  into  the  Christian 
Ministry — go  in  genuinely  I  mean — by  the  pull  of  numerous  forces ; 
sometimes  in  considerable  blindness,  sometimes  in  considerable  illu- 
mination ;  sometimes  by  their  own  private  cogitations  in  the  main, 
and  sometimes  with  great  quantities  of  advice  (and  sometimes 
against  quantities  of  advice)  ;  sometimes  by  a  rational,  prolonged, 
and  orderly  process  of  investigation  on  the  subject,  and  sometimes 
hap  hazard  ;  sometimes  against  the  stress  of  external  circumstances 
and  then  again  as  drifted  on  by  strong  circumstances  almost  against 
their  own  will.  When  the  anniversary  of  this  theological  institution 
comes  around  next  May,  and  the  ministers  assemble  in  this  chapel, 
for  a  free  discussion  of  some  topic,  as  their  fashion  has  been,  I 
should  like  to  have  them  cease  from  topics  for  once,  and  each  man 
just  honestly  tell  how  he  happened  to  become  a  minister.  Of 
course  some  would  not  want  to  tell,  because  it  might  lead  some 
young  man  present  (and  I  should  want  all  you  students  there),  to 
feel  that  he  might  go  into  the  ministry  just  as  they  did — that  is  with 
as  much  uncertainty  and  solemn  wondering  whether  he  was  not  on 
the  wrong  track.  Of  course  too,  numbers  of  the  ministers,  in  the 
present  great  joy  of  their  vocation,  and  their  present  sense  of  what 
a  holy  thing  it  is  to  be  in  it,  would  be  in  danger  of  overstating  signs 
and  tokens  which  are  really  necessary  to  a  valid  call ;  and  overstating, 
too,  perhaps,  the  number  of  tokens  that  they  themselves  had  when, 
in  the  days  of  their  youth,  they  were  considering  the  question, 
"Shall  I  go  in." 

But,  taking  all  those  clerical  witnesses  together,  I  feel  sure  that, 
out  of  their  miscellaneous  biographies,  you,  my  young  brethren, 
would  get  an  enlarged  view  of  the  variety  of  God's  operations  in 
selecting  and  constraining  his  servants.     That  would  overtake  you 


32  (  YALE  LECTURES. 

which  overtook  me  as  I  went  on  in  my  ministry.  I  went  out  of  this 
Seminary,  as  I  had  previously  come  out  of  the  house  of  my  father  and 
mother,  with  a  distinct  view  of  the  mode  in  which  souls  come 
into  the  kingdom  of  God  ;  and  of  the  spuriousness,  of  course, 
of  all  incomings  which  had  not  on  them  the  regulation  marks  of 
that  mode.  But  presently  I  began  to  discover  scattered  instances 
of  what  appeared  to  be  other  modes  of  conversion.  Then  I  found 
more.  And  then  more.  For  quite  a  while  I  dismissed  them  as  un- 
doubted spurious  cases.  They  must  be.  But  when  they  grew 
thicker  and  thicker,  and  when  on  selecting  some  of  the  best  cases  of 
ripe  piety  that  I  knew,  and  inquiring  of  them  how  they  came  in,  I 
learned  one  thing  for  certain — namely,  that  it  was  not  by  my  way, 
I  gradually  emerged  into  the  idea  that  God  was  not  so  narrow  as  I 
was,  but  worked  in  grace,  as  he  does  in  visible  Nature  ■  along  cer- 
tain great  established  lines,  to  be  sure,  as  for  example  that 
spring  and  summer  shall  come  once  in  about  so  long,  and  with  fixed 
general  features ;  but  within  those  lines,  in  a  most  vast  and  beau- 
tiful diversity,  just  as  the  spring  and  summer  give  us  almost  more 
sense  of  diversity  than  of  uniformity. 

And  as  God  calls  men  into  his  kingdom  in  more  ways  than  one, 
so  does  He  into  his  ministry ;  as  you  would  find,  I  say,  if  you  could 
get  a  chapel  full  of  honest  men  to  tell  their  story. 

I  knew  a  man,  who  took  it  for  granted  always  from  his  youth, 
that  he  was  to  be  a  minister  if  he  ever  became  a  Christian.  And 
why  did  he  take  it  for  granted  ?  God  only  knows.  He  had  never 
been  so  instructed  by  his  father  and  mother.  His  father  was  him- 
self a  minister,  but  he  had  not  conversed  with  this  son  as  to  what  he 
should  be.  For  some  reason,  right  or  wrong,  he  had  not.  And  so 
far  as  the  son  knew,  these  parents  had  not  been  moved  to  ask  God 
that  this  particular  one  among  their  sons,  should  follow  in  the  foot- 
steps of  his  father.  And  yet,  that  young  man  was  as  settled  in  the 
idea  that,  once  a  Christian,  he  should  be  a  minister,  as  he  was  that 
once  born,  he  should  have  to  die  some  day.  And  he  was  so  disin- 
clined to  the  profession  that  he  refused  to  be  a  Christian,  with  such 
a  corollary  attached  to  it.  He  refused  until  near  the" end  of  his  col- 
lege course.  But  then  he  yielded  and  moved  easily  and  without  a 
struggle  to  his  predestinated  work,  and  in  that  work  had  many  most 
clear  and  comfortable  certifications  that  he  was  in  the  way  of  God's 
choice  for  him.  Now  that  man  was  under  a  curious  bondage,  and 
the  question  is,  was  it  a  divine  bondage.     The  conviction  which  held 


YALE  LECTURES.  33 

him  was  not  rational,  in  the  sense  that  it  rested  on  perceived  reasons, 
but  it  may  have  been  none  the  less  a  divine  conviction.  God  is  not 
tied  up  to  processes  of  rationalization  in  getting  men  to  do  what  he 
wants  them  to,  and  means  to  have  them.  On  the  contrary,  three- 
quarters  of  his  work  in  ordering  human  affairs  is  covert,  we  must 
suppose.  If  his  power  were  put  in  only  in  those  few  instances 
where  we  see  it,  or  are  conscious  of  it,  all  things  would  go  to  wreck. 
No  ;  he  moves  invisibly  in  the  great  kingdom  of  human  wills,  and 
bears  the  creation  on  to  his  own  issues ;  notwithstanding  the  va- 
poring of  men,  and  their  swollen  self-consciousness,  as  though  they 
were  lording  it  here,  shaping  their  own  destinies,  and  preparing 
the  future  of  the  race. 

Now  I  do  not  present  the  example  of  that  young  man  as  an  ideal 
towards  which  other  young  men  are  to  strive.  I  will  even  admit, 
if  you  insist  on  it,  that  his  call  was  pretty  nearly  the  minimum  of  all 
calls — and  dangerously  small — but  I  name  it  as  an  encouragement 
to  any  here  who  have  not  been  able  as  yet  to  make  their  call  as 
large  as  they  would  like  ;  for  this  man  of  mine  seems  to  have  had 
proof  enough  in  his  subsequent  experience,  that  that  first  dim  expe- 
rience, and  blind  energy  of  conviction  which  tied  him  to  the  Chris- 
tian Ministry,  was  indeed  God,  choosing  a  blind  way,  rather  than 
an  open  one  to  accomplish  his  ends. 

It  were  possible  to  prepare  a  whole  lecture  on  God's  blind  ways 
with  men — he  preferring  that  way  in  numerous  instances,  in  part,  I 
suppose,  because  if  he  undertook  to  explain  to  his  small  and 
fumbling  creatures,  they  would  not  half  get  hold  of  it ;  and  in  part, 
because  the  way  of  faith  as  distinguished  from  the  way  of  sight,  is 
full  of  wholesome  discipline  for  us ;  and  in  part,  too,  because  the 
magnificent  surprises  of  God's  eventual  disclosures  as  to  the  benig- 
nity of  his  obscure  methods  with  us,  will  make  us  feel  more  than 
contented  that  we  were  detained  here  in  a  long  twilight,  and  stretch  of 
guess-work.  We  know  that  all  our  personal  affairs  are  in  his  hands, 
and  all  eternity  will  be  filled  with  tokens  of  his  most  blessed  man- 
agement of  them. 

But  I  am  discoursing  on  the  numerous  ways  in  which  God  gets 
his  ministers — and  I  wish  to  make  them  seem  numerous  in  order 
that  I  may  comfort  all  earnest  hearts  here  present,  in  which  God  is 
really  making  out  his  call,  whether  distinctly  or  only  darkly  as  yet ; 
and  while  I  am  willing  to  acknowledge  the  value  of  a  resounding  call, 
something  full  of  symptoms  supernatural  and  therefore  full  of  im- 


34  YALE  LECTURES. 

perative  persuasion,  I  much  desire  to  bring  out  the  unquestionable 
facts  of  unresounding  calls,  thousands  of  them,  calls  that  cannot  be 
heard  at  all  except  as  you  listen  closely ;  but  which,  reverently 
heeded,  may  grow  at  last  to  thunders  of  assurance. 

Dr.  Horace  Bushnell,  in  tracing  his  own  pedigree,  and  minis- 
terial outstart,  could  not,  with  all  his  fine  imagination,  make  out  for 
himself  a  regulation  call.  To  be  sure  he  had  a  mother,  who  carried 
him  in  her  heart,  body,  soul,  and  spirit,  mother-fashion,  but  silently 
in  the  main.  He  was  in  the  way  of  knowing  that  she  had  great  de- 
sires for  him  of  all  sorts — or  rather  he  was  in  the  way  of  feeling  that, 
because  she  scarcely  spoke  of  it,  as  I  said  : — these  deep  mothers 
with  their  unfathomable,  speechless  broodings,  are  not  without  a 
witness,  especially  where  their  boys  are  particularly  clairvoyant ;  and 
their  undeclared  will  and  longing  works  like  a  fiat  often,  and  makes 
destiny  for  their  beloved  three  times  more  than  much  hustling  would, 
and  an  officious  clatter  of  teaching  and  entreaty.  At  any  rate,  Bush- 
nell always  felt  a  certain  stress  upon  him,  mother-born  somehow, 
and  he  became  a  Christian,  and  then  a  collegian,  and  then  a  gradu- 
ate, and  then  after  a  little,  he  clearly  settled  his  mind  to  be  a  law- 
yer, and  not  a  minister.  And  he  wrote  a  decisive  letter  to  that 
effect.  At  that  juncture,  that  long-silent  mother  broke  silence.  The 
fact  was,  in  all  the  mothering  of  that  boy  antecedent  to  his  birth, 
she  had  mortgaged  him  to  a  particular  service  and  that  service  was 
not  the  law,  and  she,  being  about  to  have  all  her  sacred  thoughts  and 
clear  assurances  thwarted,  apparently,  by  the  eccentric  snap-judg- 
ment of  her  mysterious  Horace,  took  a  sudden  hand  in  the  fulfill- 
ment of  her  own  prayers,  and  spoke  out — all  dumbness  is  not  of 
inability,  but,  as  often  as  any  way,  of  wisdom,  and  of  God's  seal  set 
on  the  lips — she  spoke,  and  said  :  "  You  have  settled  this  question 
inconsiderately,  so  far  as  I  can  see.  I  ask  you  now  to  wait  till  you 
can  consult  your  own  mind.  I  think  you  had  best  accept  the  tutor- 
ship in  Yale  College  that  has  been  offered  you."  There  she 
stopped  in  mid- volley.  A  lesser  woman  would  have  marched  on  into 
an  argument  for  the  ministry — the  opening  for  it  seemed  good — 
but  a  person  who  could  hold  her  peace  twenty-six  or  seven  years, 
could  wait  on  God  a  little  longer ;  peradventure,  the  law  being 
staved  off  for  a  year  sure,  various  gracious  pressures  would  have  their 
chance  to  get  in  on  her  son  (which  they  did)  ;  and  so,  on  that 
whiff  of  chance  wind,  one  of  our  greatest  men  was  lodged  where  he 
belonged ;  and  was  able  to  write  nearly  half  a  century  afterwards  : 


YALE  LECTURES.  35 

"As  I  look  back  on  the  crisis  then  passed,  it  seems  very  much 
like  the  question  whether  I  should  finally  be.  No  other  calling  but 
this  ministry  of  Christ,  I  am  obliged  to  feel,  could  have  any  wise 
filled  my  inspirations,  and  allowed  me  sufficiently  to  be." 

So,  this  man  was  not  misplaced  among  human  callings,  by  the 
wilfulness  of  his  mother,  moaning  and  wandering  in  false  inspirations, 
but  he  was  set  to  his  life  task — well,  by  many  things  ;  some  of  them 
plain  enough,  some  dim,  some  very  dim,  and  some  absolutely  un- 
discoverable  at  present,  no  doubt ;  but  whether  it  was  the  constitu- 
tion of  his  mind  shaped  in  all  sorts  of  gestations  ante-natal  and  other, 
or  the  many  inworkings  of  the  Holy  Ghost,  or  the  force  of  external 
circumstances,  all  the  causes  head  up  in  the  far-away  choice,  selec- 
tion, and  will  of  God — this  primal  all-knowing  will  started  for  its 
chosen  and  choice  man  by  innumerable  paths,  by  ten  thousand  inter- 
mediates, by  straight  marches  now,  and  now  by  the  most  laborious 
and  mysterious  indirection,  by  delays,  by  reverses,  by  apparent  total 
defeats  ;  but  like  the  tortuous  river,  it  failed  not  to  find  its  way,  and 
reached  its  end,  and  I  insist  that  God  not  merely  permits  his  minis- 
ters to  find  their  calling  in  these  groping  and  accidental  ways,  but 
delights  in  it — not  as  unable  to  delight  in  other  ways  more  illumined 
all  along  and  more  full  of  comfort,  therefore,  to  the  anxious  man, 
but  as  pleased  to  make  his  providence  on  earth  a  versatile  thing. 
And  while  I  am  on  this  subject  of  small  calls,  I  might  as  well 
mention  to  you  that  Dr.  Bushnell,  telling  the  story  of  his  mother's 
mother,  related  that,  up  in  the  wilds  of  Vermont,  whither  she  had 
emigrated  from  these  parts,  she  started  a  religious  public  service, 
laying  it  on  her  timid  husband  to  offer  the  prayers,  and  putting  in, 
to  read  printed  sermons  from  Sunday  to  Sunday,  an  Unchristian 
young  man,  whom  she  had  quietly  sized  and  sampled.  She  seems 
to  have  been  a  woman  who  had  some  look  of  faith  in  her  eyes,  so 
that  men  succumbed  to  her  bidding  ;  and  when  after  a  time,  she  had 
concluded  that  her  young  man  had  the  natural  making  of  a  minister 
in  him,  she  proceeded  to  furnish  the  supernatural,  by  a  notice 
served  on  him  one  day  as  he  came  from  the  pulpit,  that  he  must  be 
a  Methodist  minister.  "  But  I  am  not  a  Christian,"  said  he.  "  No 
matter,  you  are  called  to  be  a  Christian,  and  a  preacher  both,  in  one 
call,  as  Saul  was."  Of  course,  this  peremptory  woman  did  not 
deliver  this  summons  till  she  was  sent  to  do  it.  This  youth  had 
been  much  in  her  prayers,  and  she  thought  she  knew  what  she  was 
about.     Therefore,  the  blessed  spirit,  when  he  had  caused  young 


36  YALE  LECTURES. 

Hedding  to  be  assaulted  in  front  in  this  way,  did  not  fail  to  assault 
him  in  his  soul  also,  and  he  was  not  disobedient  to  his  call,  but  fell 
in  straightway,  and  when  I,  a  little  boy,  saw  him  as  Bishop  Hedding, 
of  the  Methodist  Episcopal  Church,  I  thought  he  was  the  greatest 
man  I  had  ever  seen,  up  to  that  date ;  and  he  certainly  was  one  of 
the  most  respectable  and  serviceable  men  in  the  communion  where 
he  spent  his  life.  I  do  not  deny  that  Bishop  Hedding's  call  grew  to 
be  large  enough,  by  and  by,  but  when  it  was  first  delivered  to  him  it 
seemed  to  him  little — too  little  to  go  on — only  the  sudden  dictum  of 
one  woman,  and  she  not  infallible,  one  would  say.  But,  fallible  or 
infallible,  God  used  her.  And  he  used  that  sermon-reading  to  get 
Hedding  ready  for  the  crisis  that  was  to  come.  And,  if  we  could 
get  back  into  all  God's  secrecies,  we  should  find  that  the  fuse  for 
that  explosion  had  been  laid  long  ago,  and  had  not  been  permitted 
to  be  blown  out  by  the  thousand  winds  of  heaven. 

I  give  you  these  personal  instances,  my  brethren,  which  might 
be  multiplied  to  any  extent,  because  I  would  like  to  have  it  appear, 
beyond  a  peradventure,  that  God  uses  his  liberty,  in  moving  men 
along  into  his  service ;  uses  it  clear  to  the  borders  of  eccentricity, 
as  men  would  say.  If  he  wishes  to  secure  an  ambassador  and 
newsbearer  of  his  grace,  by  a  hand  laid  on  him  heavy  as  doom,  he 
does  it — and  oftentimes  precisely  that  is  his  wish — but  if  he  wishes 
to  secure  you  or  me  by  a  touch  scarcely  discernible,  as  some  almost 
unstatable  impression  in  our  feeling,  an  impression  which  we  cannot 
make  seem  tangible  and  solid  to  anybody  outside  of  ourselves,  or 
some  slight  concurrence  of  circumstances  which  seems  to  have 
omens  in  it,  then  He  takes  that  way ; — and  if  a  man's  ministerial 
call  takes  the  whispered  and  scarcely  articulate  form,  let  him  not 
despise  it,  and  if  it  comes  to  him  like  seven  trumpets,  let  him  not  be 
made  proud,  and  be  brought  to  the  conclusion  that  God's  whispers 
have  no  authority  in  them. 

But  now,  having  said  so  much  by  way  of  leading  you  along 
into  an  elastic  conception  of  God's  ways  in  this  great  business  of 
multiplying  ministers,  I  am  willing  to  spread  out  before  you  the  ele- 
ments and  items  of  what  is  customarily  considered  a  full-toned  and 
ideal  call.  I  can  see  no  hurt  in  mentioning  them,  especially  as  I  shall 
try  to  forestall  all  hurt  from  them  by  an  occasional  remark  by  the 
way. 

First,  then.  If  a  man  has  gifts,  he  may  be  a  minister — and 
examining  committees  always  feel  bound  to  start  the  question  of  gifts. 


YALE  LECTURES.  37 

Has  the  candidate  any  intellect,  and  has  the  moral  region  of  his 
head  any  size  ?  Can  he  think  ?  And  when  he  thinks  does  he  pro- 
duce anything,  ordinarily?  Is  there  any  ethical  sound  to  the  move- 
ment of  his  mind?  Does  he  know  anything?  Can  he  tell  to  other 
people  what  he  knows  ?  Can  he  tell  it  in  an  engaging  manner,  so 
that  if  we  start  him  out  as  a  preacher,  somebody  will  be  likely  to 
want  to  hear  him. 

And  then  passing  from  his  mind  to  his  exterior  make-up,  what 
physical  gifts  has  he  ?  Is  he  a  person  whom  one  can  look  at  with 
any  comfort  ?  What  sort  of  a  voice  has  he  ?  Has  he  lungs,  and  a 
degree  of  digestion,  and  an  affirmative  physique  all  around,  rather 
than  a  physique  negative  and  peeping. 

These,  and  the  like,  are  the  endowments  that  we  like  to  see  in 
a  young  man  who  begins  to  surmise  that  the  Christian  ministry  is 
his  proper  pursuit. 

At  the  same  time,  in  order  that  we  may  not  be  too  knowing  in 
this  matter,  and  may  not  fall  into  the  delusion  that  God  is  shut  up 
to  ten-talented  people,  for  the  accomplishment  of  his  works,  behold 
what  mighty  men  some  weak  men  are,  in  his  kingdom  and  work-field. 

I  was  considerably  instructed  by  what  I  once  heard  from  the 
lips  of  the  Rev.  William  Taylor,  the  Methodist  evangelist  who  has 
preached  his  way  clear  around  the  world,  once  at  least,  and  has  not 
found  even  unknown  languages  any  bar  to  great  spiritual  success. 
He  paused,  in  his  journey,  at  South  Africa,  and  soon  found  himself 
at  the  head  of  a  powerful  movement  of  God  among  the  natives  of 
that  region.  And  one  night  down  in  the  bush,  there  was  heard  a 
phenomenal  outcrying,  the  like  of  which  no  man  ever  heard  before. 
It  created  some  alarm,  as  though  some  wild  animal  might  be  in  the 
woods  there ;  but  a  company  of  the  bravest  men  started  for  a 
search  ;  and  the  animal  proved  to  be  a  deaf  and  dumb  Zulu,  on  his 
knees,  in  great  agony  of  guilt  before  God.  They  reverently  withdrew, 
and  left  him  to  his  lonely  wrestling  ;  and  after  two  or  three  days, 
and  a  few  more  religious  meetings,  the  man  came  out  in  great  joy, 
a  Christian  convert.  And  they  took  him  into  the  church,  a  clear 
trophy,  and  baptised  him  William  Taylor.  And,  after  things  had 
gone  on  a  little,  William  applied  for  a  license  to  preach.  He  had 
no  conceit  about  it,  as  though  he  was  a  suitable  minister  for  the 
settlements,  but  he  thought  he  could  push  out  into  the  back  country 
among  the  dark-minded  inhabitants,  and  do  some  good.  After  one 
of  the  public  services,  the  missionaries  were  discussing  his  strange 


38  YALE  LECTURES. 

case  in  the  chancel,  William  standing  by  and  earnestly  watching  their 
faces  to  see  what  the  upshot  might  be,  when  one  of  the  ministers, 
touched  by  the  sight  of  him,  handed  him  a  testament  as  a  present : 
whereupon  William  was  delighted  as  being  now  licensed,  as  he  sup- 
posed, and  he  pushed  straight  off  for  his  preaching ;  and  Mr. 
Taylor  testified  that  God  used  the  man,  most  evidently.  Of  course 
his  oratory  was  meager.  Many  of  you,  young  gentlemen,  have  felt 
that  yours  is,  but  you  are  all  very  eloquent  compared  to  him.  He 
could  do  nothing  but  pantomime.  But  what  there  was  of  his 
oratory  was  so  sincere  and  earnest  that  men  heeded  him,  and 
caught  the  sense  of  the  few  fundamental  things  that  he  tried  to 
teach ;  and  some  were  conscience-smitten,  and  sent  to  God  for  his 
mercy,  by  this  poor  incapable  soul,  imprisoned  in  eternal  silence. 
To  be  sure,  some  of  the  back-country  people  came  down  to  the 
station  at  last  for  a  change  of  ministers ;  just  as  in  the  case  of  most 
of  us,  a  change  of  parishes  is  found  to  be  best  after  a  certain  time  ; 
but  so  long  as  he  lasted,  William  was  as  much  sent  as  St.  Paul  was. 
This  is  the  strongest  case  of  weak  things  made  mighty  in  the 
ministry  of  reconciliation,  that  I  ever  heard  of;  but  I  have  heard  of 
a  good  many  like  it — and,  in  running  over  the  list  of  my  acquaint- 
ances who  have  unquestionably  succeeded  in  our  calling,  I  have 
found  so  many  who  had  no  natural  right  to  succeed  as  being  par- 
ticularly able  men,  that  the  question  of  gifts  has  long  ago  ceased  to 
be  the  major  question  with  me.  It  is  one  question,  but  not  the 
decisive  one.  Settle  it  either  way,  in  any  given  case,  and  the  exam- 
ination had  better  proceed  all  the  same.  If  the  candidate  is  a 
genius,  very  well,  and  if  he  is  not  a  genius,  very  well ;  let  us  look 
him  over  still  further. 

The  second  sign  of  a  real  ministerial  call  is  found  in  a  certain 
convergence  of  the  man's  circumstances  towards  the  work  ministerial. 
Perhaps  he  has  absolutely  no  money  wherewith  to  get  a  suitable  educa- 
tion for  the  work.  Perhaps  he  is  tied  to  some  present  duty,  which 
hinders ;  as  the  care  of  his  aged  parents,  for  example,  or  the 
carrying  of  a  business  from  which  he  cannot  withdraw  equitably. 
But  these  obstructions,  and  a  hundred  more,  are  not  entirely  deci- 
sive, as  many  a  strongly-resolved  and  powerfully-pushing  man  has 
found.  The  ways  of  money-getting,  if  you  are  thoroughly  con- 
cluded in  your  own  mind  to  get  it,  in  order  to  the  service  of  God, 
are  almost  perilously  numerous  in  these  days.  The  young  student 
burning  to  be  a  minister  is  the  delight  of  the  Christian   world. 


YALE  LECTURES.  39 

Societies  are  organized  for  him.  Dying  men  remember  to  estab- 
lish permanent  funds  for  his  benefit.  Sewing  circles  consider 
his  case.  Uneducated  relatives  take  pride  in  it,  that  a  person  of 
their  own  blood  starts  out  to  represent  the  family  in  the  educated 
walks  of.  life.  Adult  ministers  all  about,  recollecting  their  own  early 
struggles,  are  filled  with  pathos  towards  him.  And  in  addition  to 
these  ordinary,  natural,  calculable  furtherances,  if  he  be  a  true 
man,  he  will  have  windfalls  dropping  in  on  him  now  and  then  in 
such  a  curious  way  as  to  seem  preternatural.  They  come  from  un- 
known sources  perhaps.  Or  they  come  from  eminently  unlikely, 
and  humanly  impossible  sources  ;  from  the  pocket  of  a  life-long  cur- 
mudgeon it  may  be,  a  man  never  known  to  relent  before,  a  man 
whose  relenting  in  the  one  case  was  the  wonder  of  the  town.  I 
knew  an  instance  where  a  divinity  student  was  overtaken  by  just  that 
phenomenon.  Yes,  all  things  are  possible  to  God,  and  from  the  day 
that  the  smitten  rock  opened  out  its  floods  for  the  watering  of  all 
Israel,  the  men  of  God  are  entitled  to  look  for  dashes  of  the  uncom- 
mon in  their  own  lives,  together  with  many  good  strokes  of  the 
common  and  the  natural,  so  that  our  second  sign  of  a  real  ministe- 
rial call,  namely,  the  co-operation  of  circumstances,  is  a  good 
enough  sign  if  you  have  it,  but  not  a  cause  of  despair,  if  you  do  not. 
What  hosts  of  us  can  rise  up  and  testify  to  that.  The  modern  ma- 
terialistic philosophy  is  pounding  away  on  the  imperative  domina- 
tion of  circumstances,  and  we  are  all  set,  soul  and  body,  in  the  rut  of 
a  mechanical  fatalism,  but  every  living  man  of  us  knows,  that  while 
the  press  of  circumstances  is  very  cogent  sometimes,  yet  the  chief- 
est  circumstance  in  the  creation  of  God  after  all,  is  the  free-born, 
and  puissant  soul  of  man,  and  that  the  ordering  of  one's  own  circum- 
stances, especially  as  the  individual  man  is  yoked  in  with  the  will  of 
God,  is  the  one  splendor  and  the  one  zest  of  life ;  the  heroism  of 
all  heroism,  and  the  magnetism  of  all  living  history. 

The  third  indication  of  a  young  man  truly  called,  is  the 
united  advice  of  judicious  friends.  That  is  very  valuable.  Often  a 
man  is  better  known  by  others  than  he  is  by  himself.  He  under- 
rates himself — or  perchance,  he  overrates  himself — and  which  is 
worst  for  a  minister  I  hardly  know.  Sometimes  I  think  that,  in- 
asmuch as  exact  self-measurement  is  just  about  impossible,  the 
exaggeration  of  conceit  is  more  profitable  than  the  exaggeration  of 
humility.  But,  take  advice,  brethren — take  advice.  Bystanders  are 
more  unprejudiced  than  you  are.     People  of  large  experience  in  the 


40  YALE  LECTURES. 

affairs  of  life — old  ministers,  and  so  on — know  what  sort  of  men  are 
fitted  for  affairs,  and  whether  you  are,  even  approximately,  that  kind 
of  man. 

Find  out,  too,  what  the  church  in  which  you  were  reared 
thinks  of  your  adaptations — and  what  the  congregations  all  about 
think,  to  whom  you  have  incidentally  exposed  your  abilities,  on  whom 
you  have  laid  out  your  earnestness  from  time  to  time,  and,  possibly, 
practiced  your  oratorical  arts.  When  I  came  to  the  serious  work  of 
shaping  myself  for  life,  I  found  that  the  rustic  assemblies  in  several 
country  school-houses,  before  whom  I  had  discussed  questions 
during  the  long  winter  evenings,  for  the  relief  of  my  own  mind,  had 
made  up  a  silent  verdict  on  my  case,  which  they  were  now  willing  to 
put  in  as  a  makeweight  in  my  favor,  on  the  whole — and  I  leaned 
back  on  them,  or  rather  on  certain  persons  in  those  assemblies,  with 
a  satisfaction,  made  up  partly  of  pride,  partly  of  gratitude,  and 
partly  of  an  unanalyzable  pathos  towards  the  rank  and  file  of  human 
nature. 

But,  friends,  we  must  not  lean  too  much  on  even  so  good  a 
thing  as  advice.  I  like  the  saying  of  one  of  our  ministers  :  Advice 
is  to  help  a  man  do  as  he  pleases.  That  is  putting  the  matter  un- 
qualifiedly, but  all  the  sententious  and  golden  sentences  of  the 
world,  are  made  sententious  by  their  heroic  suppression  of  qualifiers. 

Who  advised  our  Lord  to  go  on?  What  Christian  in  those 
parts  took  any  stock  in  Saul  of  Tarsus  as  a  preacher,  when  he  first 
set  up  to  be  one  ?  Who  was  ready  to  license  that  deaf  and  dumb  Zulu  ? 
Who  could  persuade  the  church-bishop  of  York  to  accept  as  candi- 
date for  deacon's  order  that  non-collegiate  old  slave-trader  and 
man  of  sin,  John  Newton  ?  And  when  scores  of  us  now  living  were 
approbated  as  gospel  ministers,  what  a  considerable  negative  vote, 
spoken  or  unspoken,  was  rolled  up  against  us. 

On  the  other  hand,  what  scores  of  men  have  been  wafted  into 
the  ministry  on  unanimous  gales  of  judicious  advice,  and  have 
practically  shown  the  miserable  fallibility  of  that  advice.  I  myself 
once  had  under  my  hand  a  theological  student  in  the  first  stages  of 
his  education,  over  whose  head  all  the  stars  of  destiny  seemed  to 
conjoin ;  and  we  supported  him,  prayed  for  him,  and  boarded  him 
around  in  our  houses,  free  board ;  but  the  root  of  grace  in  his  heart 
proved  feeble,  there  was  a  constitutional  strain  of  unmanliness  in 
him,  and  he  grew  slovenly  in  his  ethical  distinctions ;  and  to  tell  the 
truth  mildly,  we  could  not  any  longer  put  up  with  him.     "  I   have 


YALE  LECTURES.  41 

entertained  a  Devil  unawares,"  said  one  of  our  Christians,  where 
our  young  man  had  had  some  months  of  good  board  for  nothing — 
and  we  all  took  back  our  judicious  advice  that  he  go  into  the  Chris- 
tian ministry. 

The  advice  of  mortal  men  is  valuable,  but  not  infallible. 

Up  to  this  point,  now,  I  have  delayed  in  the  region  of  what 
may  be  called  the  natural  signs  of  a  minister,  but  now,  at  last,  I 
propose  to  have  a  word  with  you  on  the  signs  supernatural. 

There  are  men  in  the  world,  who  hold  that  all  the  call  into  the 
ministry  a  person  needs,  or  had  better  exert  himself  to  get,  is  a  good 
concurrence  of  those  naturals  on  which  I  have  discoursed.  Let  him 
put  his  unexcited  common-sense  out  among  them,  and  see  how  they 
stand,  just  as  he  would  coolly  settle  any  secular  question  on  the  hard 
facts  presented.  Let  him  enter  our  holy  calling  in  that  reasonable 
and  not  particularly  inspired  way,  and  do  his  work  there  conscien- 
tiously; and  all  the  supernatural  things  that  are  desirable,  lights, 
warmths,  empowerments,  gifts  of  the  Holy  Ghost,  will  come  in  and 
do  their  part  to  make  him  a  success  in  the  world. 

Theoretically,  the  Protestant  Episcopal  Church,  the  Dutch  Re- 
formed Church,  the  Presbyterian  Church,  the  Methodist,  the 
Baptist,  and  I  do  not  know  but  every  church  on  earth,  Greek, 
Latin  and  Protestant,  holds  to  the  coefficient  presence  of  the 
natural  and  the  supernatural  in  every  veritable  ministerial 
call.  And  their  offices  for  the  ordination  of  ministers  are  all 
shaped  to  that  idea;  but  in  the  Greek  or  Latin  branch  of 
the  Catholic  Church,  and  even  in  the  Protestant  Episcopal  branch 
of  it,  if  all  the  requisites  of  good  order,  and  church  order,  were 
met  and  satisfied  in  the  case  of  a  young  man,  they  would  receive 
him  into  their  ministry  with  less  supernatural  marks  upon  him  and  in 
him,  than  the  Methodists,  for  example,  would  demand.  And  if  a 
young  man  seemed  to  have  any  amount  of  those  marks  on  him,  and 
in  him,  but  at  the  same  time,  had  somewhat  disorderly  and  un- 
churchly  about  him,  or  had  in  him  any  strong  exuberances  of  mys- 
ticism, those  grave  and  cautious  churches  first  mentioned  would 
want  to  look  him  over  three  times,  before  they  admitted  him  to 
holy  orders — whatever  of  the  Holy  Ghost  there  might  be  in  him, 
they  would  disrespect  to  that  extent ;  but  the  Methodists  on  the 
other  hand,  and  numbers  of  other  denominations,  would  admit  him 
more  easily — not  doubting  that  so  sane  an  influence  as  the  spirit  of 
God  in  that  young  man  would  ultimately  reduce  his  unbalance  and 
4 


42  YALE  LECTURES. 

his  irregularities.  Meanwhile,  life,  even  in  an  occasional  rampancy, 
is  better  than  the  first-class  property  of  death,  and  no  inspiration  at 
all,  they  would  add. 

So  easy  is  it,  under  much  unity  of  abstract  doctrine  on  this 
subject,  and  much  sameness  of  ordination  forms,  to  have  a  certain 
amount  of  practical  diversity. 

My  brethren,  having  now  stated  the  different  particulars  of  a 
valid  call,  as  partly  natural  and  partly  supernatural,  and  having  spent 
some  time  on  the  naturals,  I  desire  to  put  in  an  energetic  testimony 
in  behalf  of  God's  direct  and  explicit  part  in  the  calling  of  his  ser- 
vants and  ambassadors.  Of  course  our  natural  gifts  are  his  gift — 
and  our  circumstances  are  of  his  providing  and  our  good  advices 
are  his  messages — and  therefore  there  is  a  sense  in  which  these 
natural  things  are  all  supernatural,  and  that  sense  of  things  we  need  to 
bear  in  mind,  with  reverence  and  gratitude ;  but  over  and  beyond 
all  that,  God  may  serve  a  notice  on  a  man  in  wonderful  ways — in 
ways  that  force  the  man  to  say,  "Lo  !  God  is  here  with  me — in  me 
— all  through  me — through  and  through — calling  me — pressing  me 
— making  me  seven  times  willing,  expectant,  and  self-consecrate." 
The  leading  instances  of  that  sort  of  call  in  Holy  Writ,  are  pretty 
familiar  to  you.  Abraham  had  one,  when  he  left  Mesopotamia  to 
become  the  father  of  us  all ;  and  having  had  one,  he  went  on  to  have 
many — notably  his  summons  to  sacrifice  Isaac.  And  inasmuch  as 
this  stateliest  of  primitive  men,  and  original  corner-stone  of  a  uni- 
versal divine  kingdom,  was  a  man  of  repeated  calls  from  the  skies, 
we  naturally  look  to  see  his  successors  distinguished  in  the  same 
way,  and  so  they  were.  Isaac  was.  Jacob  was.  Joseph  was.  Moses 
was  most  remarkably.  He  undertook  to  beg  off  from  one  of  his 
vocations,  on  the  ground  that  he  was  no  orator,  just  as  many  of  us 
plausibly  might,  and  as  that  South  African  dumb  man  certainly 
might.  "  I  cannot  go  to  King  Pharaoh,  I  am  slow  of  speech  and 
of  a  slow  tongue,"  said  he,  (Ex.  4,  10)  ;  whereupon  his  vocation 
was  reiterated  upon  him  in  a  very  moving  and  compulsory  manner. 

All  the  Prophets,  too,  had  calls — calls  marked  by  a  strong  array 
of  externals  and  naturals  in  some  cases,  but  marked  by  supernatural 
tokens  and  special  inner  movements  in  all  cases.  I  wish  there  were 
time  to  recite  the  picturesque  accounts  which  numbers  of  them 
have  given  of  their  own  calls.  Isaiah  was  in  the  temple  when  his 
came — and  he  saw  God  there  in  visible,  high  enthronement,  and 
he  heard  God  speak  in  the  speech  of  men  actual  and  understanda- 


YALE  LECTURES.  43 

ble ;  and  there  were  visible  seraphim  and  seraphic  voices,  and  the 
poor  awe-struck  man's  lips  were  touched  with  a  living  coal  by  one 
of  those  strange,  superhuman  personages ;  and  taking  the  whole 
scene  together,  there  was  enough  of  the  transcendental  and  amazing 
in  it  to  more  than  furnish  forty  modern  men  with  a  call  of  the 
rather  rationalistic  and  purely  common-sense  kind  which  some  con- 
sider sufficient.     (Isah.  6.) 

Jeremiah  too,  had  a  similar  elaborate  call,  wherein  he  was  in- 
formed that  from  a  point  anterior  to  his  very  birth  the  predetermi- 
nations of  God  had  lighted  on  him  for  the  prophetic  office.     (Jer. 

i,5-) 

Which  reminds  me  I  ought  to  have  said  that  Samuel,  the  first  in 
God's  line  of  official  seers,  was  a  very  emphatically  called  man — or 
boy  rather,  for  God  drew  nigh  to  him  when  he  was  only  a  boy — and 
looking  back  along  the  history  of  that  boy  we  discover  that  God, 
working  through  the  prevision  and  the  holy  yearning  of  Hannah, 
his  mother,  had  him  consecrated  to  His  service  ere  he  saw  the  light, 
(i  Sam.  3,  14.) 

And  we  are  told  that  even  the  mechanics,  and  skillful  workmen, 
who  were  to  put  up  and  adorn  God's  holy  temple,  had  certain  mysti- 
cal empowerments  vouchsafed  to  them. 

Of  course  the  stiff  church  idea  of  ministerial  calls  gets  some 
comfort  for  itself  out  of  the  fact  that  the  Jewish  priests  were  born  to 
their  function,  the  office  being  hereditary ;  but  in  the  original  conse- 
cration of  the  Aaronic  priesthood,  once  for  all,  God  came  forth  in 
explicit  marvels  to  give,  on  the  spot,  a  supernatural  authentication 
to  the  proceeding,  and  make  out  a  call  that  had  in  it  every  conceiv- 
able aspect  of  a  call ;  "  which,  when  all  the  people  saw,"  (says  the 
history,)  "  they  shouted  and  fell  on  their  faces  ;  "  (Lev.  9,  24)  ;  they 
were  awe-struck  by  the  miracle  there  wrought  in  sanctification  of 
Aaron  and  his  posterity.  Moreover,  all  along  the  line  of  those 
priestly  generations,  God  threw  in  his  special  attestations  now  and 
then,  and  even  in  the  routine  of  their  priestly  service,  worked  in  as  a 
part  of  the  structure  thereof,  there  were  incessant  corruscations  of 
the  supernatural. 

But  I  must  make  haste  into  the  New  Testament  period,  and  as 
we  enter  it,  are  we  not  pressed  upon  by  an  irresistible  preposses- 
sion that  the  glory  of  the  old  system,  in  the  matter  of  which  we 
have  been  speaking,  will  be  at  least  kept  up  in  the  new,  inasmuch 
as  the  new  is  but  the  old  brought  on  to  its  fullness  and  final  re- 


44  YALE  LECTURES. 

splendence.  So  we  should  naturally  judge,  and  so  it  is.  The  New 
Testament  conception  of  a  call,  is  particularly  strong  on  its  super- 
natural side.  We  have  moved  down  now  into  the  era  of  the  Holy 
Ghost,  and,  because  we  have,  we  notice  a  slackening  of  marvels  ex- 
ternal. There  are  enough  of  them — Saul  had  them  in  his  call — 
Jesus  had  them  in  his — all  the  Apostles  had  them  sooner  or  later  in 
confirmation  of  their  ministry — still,  things  went  to  the  interior 
more,  and  the  idea  of  the'  inner  light  came  to  be  more  emphasized. 

However,  all  I  care  now  to  insist  upon,  as  in  the  line  of  my 
subject,  is  that  God's  ministers  in  those  days  did  not  get  into  their 
ministry  by  a  deliberate  and  business-like  consideration  of  pru- 
dentials on  their  part,  and  then  a  decision  to  go  in,  making  out 
their  own  call  as  it  were  ;  but  they  had  laid  upon  them  a  supernat- 
ural compulsion,  or  a  rather  irresistible  stress — a  voice  out  of  the 
sky  in  Paul's  case — a  personal  call  from  Jesus  in  the  case  of  the 
Apostolic  twelve — a  solemn  casting  of  lots  in  the  case  of  Matthias 
to  take  the  place  of  Judas  the  Apostate,  (which  lot-casting  was  an 
old  time  divinely  accredited  method  of  discovering  God's  will,  and 
not  a  piece  of  mere  hap-hazard,  by  any  means)  :  these  were  the  ways 
of  God  in  those  times,  when  he  would  fill  up  the  number  of  his  ser- 
vants— and  on  these  New  Testament  and  Old  Testament  data,  the 
church  at  large  has  always  stood  and  preached  the  doctrine  of  min- 
isters supernaturally  called.  Called  of  God  as  was  Aaron,  and  not 
self-sent,  must  they  all  be.  The  doctrine  has  been  carried  over  clear 
into  moonshine  in  individual  cases ;  and  possibly  whole  denomina- 
tions of  Christians  have  landed  in  vagaries  of  mysticism  on  the 
point,  for  the  time — and  these  personal  and  denominational  vagaries 
have  been  such  a  standing  warning  to  all  beholders,  that  many,  being 
much  determined  to  be  thoroughly  sensible,  and  a  little  more,  have 
studiously  eliminated  from  God's  calls  every  least  suffusion  of  the 
direct  supernatural.  It  is  the  indefeasible  privilege  of  finite  and 
foolish  man  to  swing  from  one  exaggeration  to  another ;  but  in  the 
midst  of  all  extremes  on  this  subject,  the  thunderous  great  voice  of 
the  general  church  has  persistently  affirmed  the  right  of  God's  min- 
isters to  be  called — by  earth-born  voices  no  doubt,  such  as  circum- 
stances, mental  gifts,  personal  piety,  committees,  councils,  the  arch- 
bishop of  York,  and  all  the  rest — but  by  heavenly  voices  as  well, 
and  principally. 

My  brethren,  I  started  this  lecture  on  a  low  key,  perhaps  you 
thought,  but  I  have  got  it  up  now,  you  see.     And  yet  not  so  far  up, 


YALE  LECTURES.  45 

I  hope,  as  to  disavow  my  first  thought,  that  men  may  become  minis- 
ters on  a  small  and  feeble  call.  I  gave  some  instances  of  the  small 
call,  you  may  remember,  and  I  showed  some  sympathy  with  those 
instances — but  I  have  great  sympathy  with  instances  more  sky-born. 
Feeble  calls  are  not  things  to  be  aimed  at,  and  striven  for,  but 
things  to  be  put  up  with  rather,  when  our  higher  aims  and  strivings 
do  not  seem  to  bring  us  into  the  whole  fullness  of  God.  God's  full- 
ness is  what  we  want.  Calls  may  begin  feeble  (they  often  do,)  but 
as  the  years  go  on,  and  our  work  goes  on,  the  call  ought  to  go  on, 
too,  from  strength  to  strength,  being  more  and  more  articulate, 
affirmative  and  inspiring.  Men  who  are  young,  and  of  only  a  few 
years  of  religious  experience,  and  a  few  years  of  religious  study, 
may  innocently  have  less  vision,  less  sense  of  God,  less  ability  to 
tell  a  divine  thing  when  they  see  it,  or  separate  a  still,  small  voice  of 
celestial  authority  from  the  ten  thousand  terrestial  noises  with  which 
it  is  mixed  up — may  innocently  have  less  of  everything,  than  those 
who  are  far  on  in  the  ministry ;  but  a  minister  whose  call  begins 
feeble  and  stays  feeble,  never  had  a  call  in  all  likelihood.  There 
come  lulls  in  everybody's  call.  We  are  fearfully  and  wonderfully 
made.  And  we  behave  fearfully  and  wonderfully  sometimes.  And 
whether  it  be  ourselves  or  our  circumstances,  or  the  machinations  of 
creatures  invisible,  the  truth  is  we  have  sinkings,  and  collapses,  and 
comatose  moods,  and  general  retirements  of  our  faculties,  spiritual 
and  all — nevertheless,  every  minister  ought  to  have  a  growing  sense 
of  mission,  on  the  whole  ;  he  must  not  be  all  lulls.  If  he  loses  his 
call  some  day,  he  must  get  it  again,  and  if  he  be  a  true  minister,  he  will. 
There  is  a  band  of  music  moving  about  the  streets  of  the 
city,  and  it  is  curious  to  notice  in  what  alternating  swells  and  falls  it 
comes  to  you.  Now  you  hear  it,  and  now  you  hear  it  not.  A  waft 
of  wind  has  caught  it.  A  line  of  buildings  intervenes.  Or,  possi- 
bly, the  musicians  themselves  have  ceased  from  their  strong  blasts, 
and  are  moving  through  their  gentler  and  half-inaudible  passages. 
So  is  it  with  this  other,  and  more  heavenly  music ;  the  music  of 
God's  voice  inviting  us  to  be  co-workers  with  him  in  the  Gospel  of 
his  Son.  That  great,  authentic  voice  comes  to  us  through  this  and 
that  medium,  even  as  the  air  at  large  is  made  to  deliver  itself  melo- 
diously through  the  several  instruments  of  the  band  ;  but  for  various 
reasons,  some  innocent  and  some  not,  that  one  dearest  music  of  our 
life,  as  chosen  men  of  God,  finds  its  ways  to  our  ear  inconstantly. 
Various  unpardonable  winds  sweep  in.  Various  infirmities,  whereinto 


46  YALE  LECTURES. 

we  were  born,  and  from  which  we  cannot  wholly  escape,  interpose 
their  confusion.  Possibly  an  occasionable  miserable  gust  from  the 
outlying  hells  of  the  universe  points  this  way,  to  hinder  our  hearing. 
And,  possibly,  God  himself,  at  intervals,  for  wise  reasons,  slackens  the 
clear  vigor  of  his  call  and  we  are  left  to  listen  for  his  gentler  tones. 
All  this  is  incidental  to  a  life  on  earth.  But  no  real  minister  will 
consent,  or  will  be  called  upon  to  consent,  to  a  life-long  loss  of  his 
supernatural  commission.  By  and  by,  the  old  music  will  come  back. 
In  some  watch  in  the  night,  in  some  moment  of  prayer  and 
mourning,  in  some  studious  hour,  in  some  praying  assembly  of 
God's  people,  by  some  bed  where  a  saint  lies  dying,  in  the  uplifted 
delivery  of  some  sermon  ;  somewhere  and  before  long,  he  will  catch 
again  that  voice  of  voices,  that  call  of  his  Heavenly  Father,  and 
straightway  his  work  will  be  transfigured  before  him  again,  and  he 
will  bear  into  it  as  with  the  strength  of  ten. 

Blessed  be  God  that  he  does  not  forsake  his  servants. 


MAKING  SERMONS. 


If  almost  any  preacher  should  offer  to  tell  me  just  how  he 
managed  in  making  his  sermons,  I  should  certainly  say  :  "  Go  on 
brother,  I  am  eager  to  hear  you."  I  have  heard  quite  a  good  many 
tell,  some  common  and  some  uncommon  ones ;  and  I  have  settled 
my  own  habits  so  that  no  amount  of  testimony  would  be  likely  now 
to  make  any  serious  improvement  in  me ;  nevertheless,  just  as  much 
I  should  want  to  have  that  man  give  me  his  story.  "  Nothing  apper- 
taining to  humanity  is  foreign  to  me,"  said  a  Latin  writer  long  ago ; 
and  in  like  manner,  I  do  not  know  that  there  is  anything  on  earth 
so  interesting  as  a  preacher  and  his  habits,  to  preachers. 

So  then  I  have  concluded  to  raise  courage  to  give  you  who  are 
here  present  my  notions  and  my  methods  in  sermon  making.  My 
methods  are  the  result  of  my  notions,  and  my  notions  are  the  result 
of  my  methods.  There  is  a  reciprocal  motherhood  there,  which 
does  not  seem  quite  natural  at  first,  but  is  natural  enough  when  you 
look  into  it. 

We  start  out  into  our  methods  in  all  fields  of  effort,  under  the 
push  of  some  preconceptions,  there  being  no  reason  why  we  should 
take  one  course  rather  than  another,  in  sermon-making,  or  in  any- 
thing else,  except  those  foregoing,  and  more  or  less  established  ideas  ; 
and  then,  if  it  so  happens  that  those  ideas,  subjected  to  experiment, 
are  practically  validated,  behold  they  (the  ideas,)  get  great  refresh- 
ment out  of  those  validations,  and  are  set  up  in  their  own  conceit 
as  though  they  were  made  for  the  first  time,  self  born ;  as  is 
copiously  illustrated  in  the  realm  of  science,  where  some  tentative 
thought,  some  bright  hypothesis,  starts  a  line  of  explorations,  and 
those  explorations,  in  their  turn,  confirm  the  hypothesis.  A  mutual 
motherhood  you  see. 

Ah,  well,  mutuality  is  the  greatest  law  we  know  of ! 


48  YALE  LECTURES. 

I.  The  first  thing  to  be  considered  in  a  sermon  is  the  getting 
of  a  topic ;  and  on  that  I  would  exhort  you  to  a  large  range  of  free- 
dom. Keep  within  the  lines  of  Christianity ;  you  had  better,  no 
doubt,  because  you  are  Christian  preachers ;  but  be  careful  to  see 
those  lines  as  sweeping  a  very  large  circuit,  and  be  careful  to  hold 
yourself  privileged  to  plunder  all  creation  beyond  those  lines  for 
material  wherewith  to  enrich  your  truly  Christian  discourse.  There 
is  a  powerful  and  most  miscellaneous  immigration  to  these  North 
American  shores,  but  there  are  forces  here  to  Americanize  these 
multitudes ;  it  is  all  right,  let  them  come.  And  if  preachers  are 
energetically  Christian,  the  immigration  into  their  discourses  of  the 
total  population  of  the  world  will  do  no  hurt,  but,  on  the  contrary, 
will  load  them  up  with  valuable  stock. 

I  find  that  topics  come  to  me  from  all  points  of  the  compass. 
Time  was  when  I  preferred  they  should  come  to  me  from  the  Bible, 
and  I  had  a  kind  of  guilty  feeling  if  they  did  not,  but  I  could  not  con- 
trol the  matter.  Everything  started  my  mind  off  in  discoursings ; 
my  newspaper,  my  secular  books,  my  contact  with  all  sorts  of  men, 
the  accidental  things  of  my  life,  and  the  accidental  things  of  other 
peoples'  lives,  the  talks  of  my  brethren  in  the  prayer  meetings, 
politics,  my  walks  abroad  on  the  face  of  nature,  my  summer 
outings — a  thousand  things — the  mind  has  front  doors  on  all  sides 
— and  pretty  soon  I  began  to  keep  a  book  of  subjects,  wherein  I 
put  down  everything  that  seemed  to  have  large  and  discoursible 
contents  in  it,  whether  Christian  or  heathen.  I  did  it  instinctively, 
and  I  see  now  that  I  was  right.  Do  not  be  afraid  of  a  cosmopolitan 
accumulation  of  material,  but  look  out  that  you  diligently  grind  it  all 
down  in  the  hopper  of  a  regenerate  and  Christianly  determined  mind. 

II.  Well,  you  have  selected  your  topic  I  will  suppose,  and 
what  you  now  want  is  a  host  of  thoughts  on  that  topic — the  more 
the  better. 

On  reaching  that  crisis  I  do  this  ordinarily ;  I  go  to  my  desk 
and  my  pen  and  my  paper,  and  there  sit  waiting  for  thoughts.  I 
open  all  my  windows  hospitably,  so  that  if  they  want  to  come  in 
they  can.  And  they  almost  always  want  to.  Somehow  they  hear 
that  I  am  there.  Why  do  all  the  winds  of  heaven  pour  down  towards 
a  vacuum  ?  Why  do  all  the  birds  of  heaven  pour  down  through 
zones  and  zones  seeking  the  summer?  Why  do  all  the  waters  of 
the  world  drift  down  towards  any  hollow  anywhere  ?  And  why  does 
all  heaven  move  towards  beseeching  souls  ?     No  matter  why.     So  it 


YALE  LECTURES.  49 

is,  and  that  is  enough.  And  it  is  enough  for  me  to  know  that  some- 
how my  waiting  mind  there  in  my  study  is  universally  advertised, 
and  excites  a  universal  good  will  towards  me,  so  that  my  windows 
are  filled  with  inflocking  thoughts,  according  (I  am  compelled  to 
say,)  to  the  size,  and  what  not,  of  my  mind.  Exactly  here,  comes 
in  the  differences  between  men.  I  can  conceive  of  even  a  minis- 
ter's sitting  there,  with  all  his  windows  lifted,  and  no  inflockings. 
Some  physical  stupidity  has  hold  of  him.  Some  exhaustion  has 
come,  some  anxiety,  some  clatter  in  the  street,  possibly  some  mis- 
chievous unembodied  spirit  from  out  the  Somewhere  that  skirts  this 
life  of  ours.  But  a  man  cannot  have  been  a  minister  a  great  while 
without  getting  on  to  a  point  where,  ordinarily,  the  currents  of  crea- 
tion will  begin  to  flow  his  way  when  he  takes  his  place  there  at  his 
desk.  His  mind  may  be  a  plain  one  and  not  over-sizable,  but  if 
there  was  enough  of  it  to  start  in  the  ministry  and  get  on  a  short 
time — really  get  on — it  will  have  thoughts,  more  or  less,  when  it 
takes  its  position  and  waits  for  them.  Sometimes  they  will  come  in 
multitudes.  Another  day  they  will  simply  straggle  in.  And  anoth- 
er day,  as  I  said,  for  special  reasons,  they  may  not  come  at  all. 

But,  come  they  profusely,  or  come  they  very  scattering,  all  that 
do  come  I  record  on  the  spot.  I  record  the  large  and  magnetic 
thoughts,  of  course  (if  any  such  happen  along,)  but  I  record  the 
little  ones  too.  I  record  everything  that  can  be  spoken  of  as 
amounting  to  a  thought  on  that  chosen  subject  of  mine.  And  I 
keep  on  in  that  way  so  long  as  thoughts  come  at  all.  No  doubt  by 
that  time  I  have  what  some  would  call  a  very  heterogeneous  and 
unusable  mass  of  material — a  perfect  chaos  precipitated  there  on  my 
paper.  But  they  are  mistaken.  They  know  not  the  beautiful  sanity 
of  the  human  mind  and  the  beautiful  coherencies  on  which  it  insists, 
always  and  instinctively.  All  those  items  there  recorded  are  strung 
on  one  string,  and  are  no  hotch-potch  at  all,  because  the  mind  that 
waited  for  them  at  the  desk  and  got  them,  waited  in  a  certain  status 
— it  was  not  a  vacuum  by  a  good  deal,  but  a  mind  occupied  by  a 
chosen  subject,  as  the  love  of  God,  or  the  ruin  of  man,  or  the  pas- 
sion of  Jesus  on  Calvary ;  and  whatever  thoughts  come  to  a  mind 
thus  preoccupied,  and  in  that  particular  status,  come  they  from 
here  or  there  or  yonder,  or  from  regions  most  remote,  will  assured- 
ly be  in  every  case,  and  without  one  exception  to  all  eternity, 
congruous  to  that  mind  in  that  particular  state.  A  rather  striking 
fact  when  you  look  at  it.     I  heard  a  lecture  many  years  ago  on  The 


50  YALE  LECTURES. 

Laws  of  Disorder,  and  this  fact  which  I  have  just  given  you,  the 
profound  fact  that  all  minds  have  thoughts  harmonious  with  their 
nature,  and  on  any  given  occasion  harmonious  to  their  special  state 
for  the  time  being,  so  that  the  thoughts  are  not  a  medley,  but  an 
affiliated  multitude — that  fact  I  say,  may  well  come  in  as  one  illus- 
trative item  under  that  brilliant  caption — The  Laws  of  Disorder.  I 
energize  on  this  point  a  little  because  I  have  heard  of  men  objecting 
that  this  way  of  securing  the  stuff  of  sermons  secures  a  mass  of 
unrelated  items,  and  makes  a  sermon  just  an  omnibus  of  unclassifi- 
able  particulars.  I  say  it  is  not  so.  And  I  give  a  good  reason  for 
saying  it,  to  wit :  that,  in  the  nature  of  things,  only  those  ideas  drift 
into  a  waiting  mind  preoccupied  by  a  subject,  which  are  germane  to 
that  mind  in  its  special  mood  or  state  as  thus  preoccupied ;  and  if 
all  the  ideas  floating  in  are  thus  germane  to  one  mind,  they  must 
be  germane  to  each  other ;  and  there  is  no  getting  around  it. 

When  I  speak  of  a  waiting  mind  I  do  not  mean  a  non-affirma- 
tive, non-energized,  Mr.  Micawber  sort  of  a  mind,  waiting  for 
something  to  turn  up,  but  a  mind  intent,  a  mind  that  goes  to  its 
windows  and  looks  out  and  longs,  and  thrusts  forth  its  telescope  to 
find  something.  A  mind  thus  intense,  investigatory,  and  practically 
beseeching,  amounts  to  a  tremendous  loadstone  in  the  midst  of  the 
full-stocked  creation — full-stocked  with  the  materials  of  thought — 
and  when  this  or  that  comes  into  the  windows  of  such  a  mind  it  is 
stamped  by  that  mind,  and  specialized  to  its  uses,  with  a  threefold 
vigor,  and  all  the  incomes  thus  explicitly  stamped  are  the  more 
explicitly  germane  to  each  other,  and  visibly  of  one  species. 

I  insist  on  this  original  exertion,  this  doing  of  one's  best  with- 
out the  help  of  books  or  anything  else  ;  I  insist  on  that,  as  the  first 
step  towards  a  sermon,  because  only  by  that  kind  of  exercise  does 
a  man  grow  to  be  a  real  and  fertile  thinker,  whom  endless  produc- 
tion does  in  no  wise  exhaust,  but  does  continually  replenish  rather ; 
the  mind  of  man  being  not  a  pond  that  can  be  drained  off  by  a  few 
years  of  sermonizing,  but  an  artesian  well,  a  constitutionally  up-bub- 
bling thing,  so  long  as  life  and  health  hold  out.  I  congratulate  you, 
young  gentlemen,  that  you  all  have  that  practically  infinite  thing  in 
you ;  and  that  as  you  go  on  in  your  ministry  you  may  be  more  and 
more  conscious  of  this  inexhaustible  exuberance,  and  may  move  in 
the  joy  and  courage  of  that  consciousness. 

I  insist  upon  original  effort ;  that,  rather  than  reading  to  begin 
with,  for  another  reason.     In  every  mental  act  there  are  two  factors 


YALE  LECTURES.  51 

involved  ;  the  thinking  mind,  and  the  external  materials  which  it 
manipulates ;  and  men  may  be  classified  as  original  and  productive 
thinkers,  or  as  copyists,  plagiarists,  and  forms  of  echo,  according  as 
they  dominate  this  their  material,  or  are  dominated  by  it.  But  the 
most  ignominious  person  in  all  the  world,  if  so  that  he  have  one  re- 
maining spark,  or  last  flicker,  of  manliness  in  him,  desires  to  be  a  man 
of  supreme  generative  force  and  not  an  echo  ever ;  and  this  he  can 
secure  only  as  in  the  handling  of  subjects  he  thinks  with  all  his 
might  before  he  reads,  as  I  have  already  described.  Let  him  go 
from  that  desk  of  solitary  effort  on  his  theme  to  any  amount  of 
reading  on  it,  and  those  readings  instead  of  overloading  him  and 
smothering  him,  and  making  his  whole  movement  stupid  and  un- 
wieldly,  and  giving  every  listener  to  his  sermon  to  know  that  it 
is  in  reality  a  borrowed  one,  will  be  athletically,  victoriously  appro- 
priated, assimilated  and  turned  to  use,  being  coined  and  made  his 
own  visibly  in  the  mint  of  his  own  vigor.  Moreover,  coming  to  the 
books  bearing  on  his  topic — the  commentaries  and  all  the  rest — his 
mind  within  him  will  be  so  vital  and  informed  by  his  preliminary 
meditations  and  creative  acts,  that  it  will  gather  up  the  parts  and 
elements  of  those  books  that  are  suitable  to  his  purpose,  and  usable, 
with  a  double  rapidity.  I  have  been  surprised  many  times,  after  I 
have  diligently  gestated  a  subject  myself  and  then  have  started  out 
into  my  library  for  the  say-so  of  other  men  on  that  subject,  to 
notice  not  merely  in  what  a  lightsome  and  expert  way  I  handled 
them,  but  also  in  what  a  swift  facility  I  utilized  their  many  volumes ; 
— sometimes  one  glance  will  answer — and  if  I  encounter  a  book 
wherein  the  entire  subject  is  opened  out  profoundly  and  in  a  com- 
plete treatment,  considerable  portions  of  the  book  I  catch  up  with 
a  touch  and  go,  and  the  denser  parts  cannot  very  long  delay  me. 
This  sounds  boastful,  but  it  is  not.  Almost  any  man  may  make  the 
experiment  for  himself.  And  I  advise  you  all  to  make  it — and  to 
keep  making  it  so  long  as  you  live. 

Some  of  you  perhaps  would  like  to  say  to  me,  "  now  that  very 
rule — first  think  and  then  read — does  not  apply  equally  well  to  all 
kinds  of  sermons  ;  "   so  let  us  look  at  that. 

If  the  sermon  is  purely  expository,  our  one  duty  is  to  tell 
exactly  what  the  sacred  writer  meant  to  say  in  the  passage  before  us 
— where  then  does  that  original  and  generative  effort  of  which  I 
have  spoken  set  in,  and  can  it  come  in  at  all  ?  I  answer,  it  is  a 
notorious   fact  that  one  man  will  find  three  times  as  much  in   a 


52  YALE  LECTURES. 

passage  as  another — find  it,  I  say,  not  put  it  in,  as  the  manner  of 
some  inventive  gentlemen  is,  whose  spirit  is  imaginative  more  than 
historical  and  to  whom  the  Bible  is  a  partially  hollow  vessel  requir- 
ing to  be  humanly  filled.  No,  they  will  find  large  contents  in  the 
passages  that  they  expound ;  because  they  are  men  well  trained  in 
creative  thinking,  and  bring  that  training  to  bear  on  scriptural  passages. 
My  practice  in  expository  work,  is,  at  the  start,  always,  to  expound 
the  scripture  in  question  myself  with  what  strength  I  can  muster  at 
the  moment.  Somehow  that  gives  me  a  good  glow,  the  Bible  and  I 
get  on  to  brotherly  and  joyful  terms  with  each  other,  I  have  laid 
myself  down  on  the  heart  of  it  and  felt  its  vigor  first-hand ;  and 
now  if  any  commentator  wants  to  speak  a  word  with  me,  very  well, 
let  him  speak ;  it  will  not  embarrass  me  at  all. 

Or,  perhaps,  the  sermon  to  be  produced  is  an  altogether  histor- 
ical one ;  a  sermon  of  information.  Very  well,  in  that  case,  I 
acknowledge  the  first  step  is  to  get  that  information — and  that  brings 
in  reading.  But  there  are  two  ways  of  reading ;  one  the  memoriter 
way,  the  mere  gathering  up  of  facts,  and  the  other  the  thoughtful, 
brooding,  creative  way ;  the  way  that  finds  great  subjects  all  along 
in  the  stark  events  of  history,  so  that  they  are  not  stark  (not  at  all) 
but  eminently  relational  and  prolific.  The  sand-atom  is  stark,  the 
seed-atom  is  not,  and  history  is  a  seed-ground — it  is  so  in  fact,  and 
it  is  so  as  read  by  original  and  originating  minds. 

So  I  do  not  see  but  my — Think  first,  and  read  afterwards,  holds 
pretty  well  all  around. 

III.  We  have  now  reached  the  third  step  in  the  making  of  a 
sermon.  We  have  our  topic ;  we  have  assembled  our  materials ; 
and  the  next  thing  is  to  organize  those  materials ;  for  let  it  be  said 
to  the  credit  of  human  auditors  and  congregations,  they  refuse  to  be 
blessed  to  the  full  by  unarranged  and  disorderly  masses  of  sermon 
matter,  thrown  out  with  whatever  fine  delivery,  or  whatever  moral 
earnestness.  It  must  be  organized.  And  in  that  business  of  organi- 
zation, a  real  master-workman  has  a  good  chance  to  show  himself. 
Anybody,  almost,  can  drag  together  the  timbers  for  a  building,  but 
only  a  person  of  skill  and  invention  can  do  the  next  thing. 

Now,  the  materials  which  you  have  amassed,  can  be  put  together 
and  made  an  orderly  unit,  in  half  a  dozen  ways — perhaps  more ; 
on  what  principle  therefore  shall  you  select  one  way  rather  than 
another?  I  reply,  if  you  are  going  to  organize  your  subject  simply 
as  a  subject,  and  not  as  a  means  of  good  influence  on  your  hearers, 


YALE  LECTURES.  53 

perhaps  there  are  a  number  of  ways  of  doing  it ;  but  as  God's  ser- 
vant sent  for  the  salvation  of  men,  you  do  not  want  to  be  a  man  of 
subjects  and  no  more ;  you  will  surely  fall  out  of  your  vocation  and 
be  a  lecturer,  and  intellectualist,  if  you  go  on  that  principle — one  of 
the  most  mournful  forms  of  suicide  ever  heard  of;  a  called  man 
lapsed  from  his  calling  !     God  save  you  from  that. 

So  you  must  ask  yourself,  in  every  case — what  do  I  wish  to 
accomplish  with  this  sermon-stock  that  I  have  on  hand.  When  that 
is  settled,  the  form  of  the  organization  to  be  made  begins  to  be  set- 
tled. Get  your  aim,  and  every  least  item  of  your  stock  of  material 
spontaneously  shapes  itself  to  that  aim ;  as  all  things  followed  the 
music  of  Orpheus.  A  clear  aim,  firmly  held,  works  the  following 
results. 

It  saves  you  from  treating  your  sermon  as  a  work  of  art,  and 
fashioning  it  under  an  artistic  impulse  merely.  When  it  is  finished 
it  may  be  a  work  of  art,  sermons  frequently  are ;  but  it  has  come  to 
be  so  incidentally  and  not  of  your  set  purpose.  Your  purpose  was 
to  bless  men,  and  in  so  far  as  your  discourse  is  after  the  forms  of  art, 
and  is  therefore  beautiful,  that  high  and  lordly  intention  of  yours 
did  it.  Let  it  not  be  thought  a  strange  thing  that  a  God-fearing  and 
noble  intention  should  thus  show  an  esthetic  result — the  pitiful  thing 
is  that  such  an  intention  does  not  always  secure  an  esthetic  result. 
Every  minister  has  a  right  to  have  his  mind  work  beautifully  as  well 
as  truly,  so  that  while  truth-lovers  shall  admire  it,  people  of  taste 
can  too.  In  the  several  provinces  of  art,  literature,  painting,  music 
and  sculpture,  it  is  often  said  that  the  artist  ceases  from  real  art, 
necessarily,  the  moment  the  thought  of  utility  or  human  advantage 
in  his  work  is  permitted  to  take  hold  of  him.  If  he  undertakes  to 
be  a  preacher  to  men  he  is  no  longer  an  artist,  and  his  work  shows 
it.     That  is  the  idea. 

No  doubt,  many  who  were  by  nature  preachers,  and  who  greatly 
desired  to  do  good,  have  resorted  to  art-forms,  as  the  means  to  their 
end,  and  have  marred  and  mutilated  art  by  thus  harnessing  her  in  to 
their  purposes  of  utility ;  but  that  was  because  they  were  preachers 
and  not  artists — it  being  possible  (though  not  easy)  to  be  preacher 
and  artist  in  one  ;  possible  but  not  easy — not  easy,  for  example  if  you 
write  a  novel  to  impress  a  truth,  and  would  never  have  thought 
of  writing  the  novel  excepting  as  that  truth  had  possessed  you ; 
almost  certainly  the  strenuousness  of  your  moral  intention  will  warp 
you  away  from  the  absolute  exactitudes  of  the  beautiful — so  that  the 


54  YALE  LECTURES. 

safest  rule  for  ministers  and  sermonizers  is,  take  a  good  aim  at  the 
needs  of  the  congregation  and  let  high  esthetics  take  care  of  them- 
selves, considerably.  If  they  get  into  your  sermon,  very  well,  but 
do  you  keep  your  utilitarian  intention  as  a  preacher,  high  up, 
strong,  steadfast  and  solemn. 

The  second  use  of  getting  an  aim  before  you  proceed  to  shape 
the  materials  of  your  discourse  is,  that  you  thus  save  yourself  from 
all  divergencies  and  rhetorical  dallyings  as  you  pass  on,  from  all 
unprofitable  self-consciousness.  Multitudes  of  sermons  are  much 
occupied  with  their  own  selves.  They  stop  to  make  nosegays. 
They  stop  to  posture  and  make  themselves  agreeable.  They  stop  to 
see  how  good  an  argument  they  can  make.  They  fall  into  a  mania 
for  minute  elaboration.  They  are  detained  in  forty  allurements. 
Meanwhile,  the  people  out  there  who  are  listening  to  that  sort  of 
sermon  have  a  great  deal  of  leisure  to  admire  the  fine  points  made 
and  praise  the  rhetoric,  and  say  within  themselves — "  What  a  tre- 
mendous preacher  we  have."  That  preacher  has  forgotten  to  have 
any  aim.  Those  men  in  the  pews,  if  really  addressed  and  yearned 
over,  could  not  get  a  chance  to  make  those  leisurely  remarks  of 
theirs.  Preaching  is  in  order  to  salvation,  in  God's  idea,  and  if  the 
sermon  went  for  that  point-blank  and  forever,  it  could  not  be 
otherwise  than  a  sermon  of  a  certain  sort — a  sermon  that  is,  free  of 
every  dallying,  every  ambitiousness,  all  posy- work,  all  self-con- 
scious smartness. 

And  I  may  add,  it  would  be  likely  therefore  to  have  unity, 
which  is  an  indispensable  virtue  in  all  expression  expected  to  take 
a  mighty  hold  on  men. 

And  once  more,  in  a  single  word — an  explicit  aim,  as  you  begin 
to  consider  your  materials  of  discourse  and  try  to  pull  them  into 
shape,  will  show  you  what  parts  of  the  mass  may  be  omitted  from 
the  organization  you  are  about  to  make — omitted  as  not  relevant  to 
the  purpose  which  you  have  chosen. 

I  want  to  testify,  though,  from  out  of  my  own  experience,  that  it 
is  curiously  little  of  that  material  you  will  be  called  upon  to  discard 
ordinarily.  As  a  rule,  you  can  work  in  nearly  the  whole  of  it,  and 
make  it  serve  an  orderly  use  in  your  discourse — the  reason  being,  I 
suppose,  that  each  item  of  the  whole  is  related  to  every  other  item ; 
that  relation  being  caused  by  the  fact  mentioned  by  me  before, 
that  the  entire  accumulated  mass  came  in  as  brought  in  by  a  mind 
in  a  particular  state,  as  filled  by  a  selected  topic.     It  is  a  pleasure  to 


YALE  LECTURES.  55 

know  this,  for  when  we  have  laboriously  got  our  sermon  together  in 
the  crude  stock  of  it,  our  feelings  are  hurt  to  be  compelled  to  throw 
away  any  of  it. 

It  has  been  the  sin  of  my  life  that  I  have  not  always  taken  aim. 
I  have  been  a  lover  of  subjects.  If  I  had  loved  men  more  and 
loved  subjects  only  as  God's  instruments  of  good  for  men,  it  would 
have  been  better,  and  I  should  have  more  to  show  for  all  my  labor 
under  the  sun.  As  I  look  back  upon  this  defect,  the  principal  con- 
solation I  have  is  that  a  Christian  subject,  even  when  it  is  unfolded 
simply  for  its  own  sake,  may  have  some  wholesome  magnetism  for 
the  people  who  have  contact  with  it. 

I  have  spoken  thus  far  of  a  supreme  aim  at  the  welfare  of  your 
hearers,  as  a  very  great  advantage  in  several  respects,  but  especially 
in  this  fundamental  business  of  getting  your  sermons  organized ; 
but  that  business  is  so  fundamental,  and  your  sermon  is  something  or 
nothing  so  entirely  according  as  it  has  some  good  shape  or"  not,  that 
you  must  pardon  me  if  I  din  on  organization  a  little  longer.  Given 
an  aim,  some  things  are  settled,  but  not  all.  It  is  settled  that  no 
sort  of  stock  and  stuff  must  come  into  your  discourse  that  is  inhar- 
monious with  that  aim.  And  it  is  settled  that  whatever  stock  and 
stuff  you  do  put  in,  shall  be  so  put  in  as  to  consort  with  that  aim, 
and  further  it. 

But  very  likely  there  are  several  conceivable  forms  of  organiza- 
tion under  which  these  necessary  particulars  will  be  reasonably 
well-secured ;  and  we  want  to  know  now  how,  out  of  these  several 
forms,  the  right  one  may  be  hit  upon. 

Here  I  bring  you  face  to  face  again  with  the  differences  be- 
tween men — the  differences  original  and  the  differences  acquired. 
In  some  kinds  of  mental  work,  one  man  is  as  good  as  another — just 
as  in  the  humdrum  of  ordinary  life  a  coward  is  hardly  distinguish- 
able from  a  hero ;  but  as  in  a  great  emergency,  (in  shipwreck,  for 
example,)  the  awful  dissimilarity  in  men  suddenly  stands  out,  and  a 
day  of  judgment  is  come,  so  in  certain  sorts  of  intellectual  perform- 
ance there  are  men  and  men,  and  a  single  hero  may  be  worth  an 
acre  of  ordinaries. 

One  sermonizer  has  but  to  look  at  his  sermon-matter  and  it 
straightway  trots  into  organization,  like  the  horses  ;of  a  fire  engine 
when  the  alarm  bell  rings ;  but  another  man  fumbles  his  materials 
for  hours,  and  then  hasn't  much  of  a  sermon.  The  first  man's 
sermon  is  a  shapely  tree,    the  other's  just  manages  to  be  a  tree, 


56  YALE  LECTURES. 

but  in  all  sorts  of  disproportion.  Still,  the  intuitiveness  of  that  first 
man,  and  his  supernatural  mastery  over  the  stuff  in  hand,  while  at 
first  it  may  seem  to  you  just  an  ultimate  fact,  and  beyond  all  ex- 
planation, a  simple,  direct  endowment  of  God,  it  being  God's 
prerogative  to  elect  A  to  intuitiveness  and  Z  to  fumbling  and  the  like  ; 
behold,  it  certainly  is  not  altogether  an  unanalyzable  fact.  The  out- 
springings  of  intuition  are  the  composite  result  of  original  en- 
dowments, and  of  good  training,  and  of  much  practice. 

Millions  of  people  had  seen  apples  fall  from  trees  before 
Isaac  Newton  saw  his  apple  and  guessed  the  law  of  gravitation — a 
magnificent  out-jump  into  the  unknown.  Why  did  not  they  all 
make  the  jump  ?  First,  I  confess,  because  they  were  not  the  jumping 
kind,  perhaps,  most  of  them.  We  are  not  all  born  to  the  same  thing. 
But  secondly,  because  Newton  by  long  study,  and  a  large  ingather- 
ing of  scientific  data  had  provided  for  himself  a  first-rate  standing 
place  for  a  great  and  infallible  jump.  He  did  not  launch  forth  from 
the  known  bito  the  immeasurably  unknown,  on  the  gush  of  a  simple 
impulse  to  launch.  That  sort  of  stone-blind  irrepressibility  is  of  no 
account.  There  is  no  law  in  its  movement,  and  it  never  comes  to 
anything.  It  would  not  guess  gravity  in  a  hundred  thousand  years. 
But  Newton,  I  say,  while  he  did  not  lack  impulse,  had  a  considerable 
knowledge  of  the  secrets  of  the  physical  universe,  and  quite  an  ac- 
quaintance with  the  way  things  are  wont  to  go  on  out  there — just  as  I 
can  prophesy  on  the  as  yet  unknowable  parts  of  a  man's  life,  whom 
I  have  summered  and  wintered  with,  and  variously  taken  to  pieces 
in  my  analysis. 

So  then,  your  intuitive  organizer  of  sermons,  is  thus  expert 
because  he  has  studied  his  business,  and  has  exercised  himself  a 
good  deal  in  experimenting  on  the  principles  he  has  discovered. 
He  has  discovered  that  an  aimless  organization  is  void  of  one  first 
principle  of  organization  in  pulpit  discourse.  He  has  discovered — 
perhaps  some  one  told  him  and  perhaps  not,  but  he  has  found  out, 
some  how — that  there  is  a  philosophical  way  of  formulating  a  dis- 
course, and  an  unphilosophical  way  ;  a  way  in  which  one  thing  leads 
on  to  another  according  to  the  eternal  and  universal  laws  of  thought, 
and  (what  is  more),  according  to  the  profoundest  of  those  laws, 
and  a  way  in  which  one  thing  springs  out  of  another  by  a  connection 
so  shallow  as  to  amount  to  practical  incoherency ;  and  he  has  dis- 
covered that  the  incoherent  way  confuses  the  people  who  listen  to 
him,  and  thus  steals  away  their  right  to  get  some  good  out  of  the 


YALE  LECTURES.  57 

time  they  spend  together — also  he  has  discovered  that  his  own  mind 
when  called  to  make  a  discourse  on  an  unphilosophical  plan,  has 
seven  times  the  labor  and  affliction  to  get  on,  and  get  out,  that  it 
need  to  have,  just  as  you  and  I  may  tug  ourselves  to  death  trying  to 
handle  great  weights  that  a  porter  will  manage  easily,  because  he 
applies  his  strength  in  a  rational  manner.  Also,  our  sermonizer  has 
discovered,  that  if  for  any  reason  he  or  his  people  wish  to  remember 
his  sermon,  if  it  is  philosophically  put  together,  they  can  remem- 
ber ;  whereas,  if  it  is  unphilosophically  put  together,  neither  he  nor 
they  can  retain  it  except  by  one  of  those  absolute  and  stark  acts  of 
memorization  which  may  be  very  interesting  as  phenomena  and  as 
showing  what  the  human  mind  can  do  when  thoroughly  put  to  it, 
but  which  are  a  dreadful  strain  to  the  average  man,  and  are  of  no 
special  value,  either,  in  the  general  development  of  the  mind.  Per- 
haps the  minister  preaches  memoriter,  or  perhaps  he  preaches  from 
a  brief,  and  in  either  case  his  work  of  recollection  is  trebled  if  his 
sermon  is  fortuitously  thrown  together,  or  is  developed  from  point 
to  point  under  the  lesser  and  more  trivial  laws  of  mental  association, 
rather  than  under  the  great  laws  ;  as  where  his  score  of  memoranda 
gathered  by  original  effort  at  his  desk,  or  gathered  from  books,  are 
made  to  root  all  in  one  comprehensive  thought  and  sentence. 

I  could  illuminate  this  matter  much  more,  if  I  could  take  time 
to  spread  out  before  you  actual  specimens  of  rational  work,  and  of 
incoherent  work,  in  sermon-making. 

But  I  was  praising  the  intuitive  organizer,  and  trying  to  let  some 
light  in  on  his  secrets.  First,  he  has  brains  to  some  extent,  though 
not  necessarily  to  any  alarming  extent ;  and  secondly,  his  discoveries, 
one  and  another — such  as  I  have  just  enumerated — he  has  experi- 
mented on.  He  has  made  aimed  discourses — and  unaimed  ones. 
He  has  made  discourses  on  philosophically  articulated  skeletons,  and 
he  has  made  them  on  ram-shackling  and  forbidden  skeletons. 
These  forbidden  and  impossible  skeletons  he  invented  when  he  was 
young  and  had  not  practically  learned  the  differences  of  things,  or 
when  he  was  too  weak  to  do  other  than  impossible  things.  Latterly, 
since  he  became  knowing,  he  has  practiced  the  logical  sort  of  plan, 
the  philosophical,  the  genetic  plan,  wherein  one  thought  vitally  out- 
branches  from  the  thought  foregoing ;  the  plan  rememberable,  the 
plan  that  is  a  plan  (and  the  only  one  that  deserves  the  name) . 
And  now  his  mind  walks  in  among  his  accumulated  memoranda, 
like  a  farmer  into  his  harvest  fields  ;  and  lays  things  out  in  orderly 
5 


58  YALE  LECTURES. 

swaths,  in  absolute  unconsciousness  of  the  principles  on  which  he 
operates.  See  that  girl  pound  that  piano  !  She  knows  the  principles 
on  which  she  is  operating — to  her  sorrow,  and  may  be  to  the 
sorrow  of  all  listeners.  But  see  her  ten  years  later.  She  just 
careers,  without  a  thought  of  principles.  She  has  passed  out  of 
love  into  gospel  and  moves  unlaboriously  and  lyrically.  Likewise 
there  may  be  a  lyrical  organization  of  a  sermon — a  spontaneous 
rightmindedness  therein ;  a  philosophical  movement  full  of  melody 
to  the  inner  ear,  because  philosophical — for  a  profound  orderliness 
is  always  musical  to  the  appreciative  mind. 

The  question  is  sometimes  raised,  how  plainly  a  preacher  had 
better  show  to  his  congregation  the  skeleton  in  his  sermons.  I 
should  say,  as  a  rule,  just  about  as  plainly  as  he  shows  his  own 
skeleton.  If  there  should  ever  come  up  a  serious  doubt  among  a 
people  whether  their  minister  has  any  skeleton,  he  had  better  show 
one.  A  purely  unformulated  and  gelatinous  physique  in  a  public 
man  were  disagreeable,  and  fitted  to  give  his  congregation  a  painful 
sense  of  insecurity.  I  have  heard  numbers  of  men  complain  of 
Ralph  Waldo  Emerson,  when  they  had  just  heard  him  lecture,  that  his 
mind  meandered  from  point  to  point  in  almost  unmitigated  hap- 
hazard. Said  a  clerical  friend  of  mine — a  bright  man  too, — "  it 
sounded  as  though  he  had  opened  his  scrap-book  and  given  us  page 
after  page  of  that,  consecutively — for  a  lecture."  I  knew  better — 
for  there  was  never  born  a  more  coherent  man  than  Mr.  Emerson 
in  all  the  substantiate  and  profundities  of  coherency — and  I  never 
could  have  had  the  face  to  ask  him  to  appear  any  more  consecutive 
than  he  did  ;  but,  perhaps  preachers  do  well  to  show  their  skeletons 
often  enough  to  create  a  general  feeling  that  they  always  have  them. 
In  some  instances  it  may  be  desirable,  for  some  reason,  that  the 
people  carry  away  the  sermon  in  a  form  to  report  upon ;  in  those, 
let  your  plan  come  forward  into  unmistakable  visibility — the  heads 
and  all  the  members,  italicized  and  full-spoken.  But  more  often  than 
anyway  I  think  it  is  just  as  well  to  keep  your  frame-work  a  little  retired. 
I  do  not  believe  that  the  highest  kind  of  discourses,  the  intensely 
vital  and  powerfully  magnetic  ones,  the  sermons  that  are  most  full 
of  their  author,  in  his  totality  and  his  inspired  v.ehemency — I  do 
not  believe  that  kind  enjoy  being  shown  skeleton- wise.  They  do 
not  care  to  be  remembered,  in  their  details,  by  the  people.  If  only 
they  can  make  all  minds  alert,  and  all  souls  warm  and  assimilative, 
while  they  go  on  being  delivered,  they  are  satisfied — those  sermons 


YALE  LECTURES.  59 

are — as  convinced  that  they  have  thus  accomplished  their  highest 
possible  good.  Sermons  of  instruction,  systematic  courses  of  sermons 
on  points  of  divinity,  may  well  be  put  into  a  form  to  be  easily 
remembered,  but  sermons  of  quickening  are  different.  They  can 
quicken  enough,  without  much  display  of  structure.  If  a  sermon 
is  a  real  birth  and  out  of  a  man's  living  interiors,  and  not  a  mere 
mechanical  result  of  the  constructive  intellect  working  among  ob- 
jective material,  it  will  always  have  a  thoroughgoing,  reasonable 
plan ;  precisely  as  each  individual  of  each  species  of  animals,  as 
being  an  outcome  of  life,  will  have  an  unmistakable,  and  specific 
and  satisfactory  skeleton  ;  but  these  vitally-born  sermons  will  always 
incline  to  be  a  little  Emersonian,  and  modest,  in  their  display  of 
plan.  And  they  can  afford  to  be,  that  is,  they  can  afford  to  lose 
what  force  and  consolation  there  may  be  in  a  plain  skeleton,  because 
they  are  so  charged  with  the  elements  of  life,  and  are  so  life-giving. 

It  is  time  for  me  now  to  remark : 

IV.  Fourthly,  and  lastly,  on  that  agony  and  despair  of  many 
inexperienced  sermonizers,  called  amplification ;  amplification,  I 
say,  which  in  strict  definition  is  not  making  a  few  thoughts  go  a 
long  way,  by  powerful  inflation,  but  clothing  your  outlined  sermon 
in  a  full-sounded  corporeity  of  actual,  ponderable  thoughts,  all  of 
them  relational,  of  course,  to  that  outline  with  its  first,  second, 
third  and  fourth,  of  main  thoughts. 

Let  me  draw  an  illustration  of  this  matter  from  the  lecture  I 
am  now  delivering. 

First,  I  resolved  to  give  a  lecture  here  on  sermon  making. 
That  was  exceedingly  notional,  and  well  nigh  inevitable,  because  I 
was  to  address  for  a  few  weeks  here,  a  congregation  of  embryo 
sermonizers. 

Next,  I  resolved  to  have  the  scheme  of  my  lecture  on  sermon 
making  stand  thus  :  The  topic  of  the  sermon — The  accumulation  of 
the  material — The  organization  of  it  in  a  suitable  scheme — The 
amplification  into  the  full  written  form.  That  scheme  grew  out  of 
the  fact  that  a  sermon  has  in  it  those  essential  particulars — and  it 
was  therefore  just  about  forced  upon  me.  It  is  good  to  have  the 
path  of  duty  made  plain  by  a  powerful  press  of  circumstances. 

Under  the  first  head — The  Topic — I  got  all  the  amplification 
I  could  delay  upon  out  of  the  idea  that  sermonizers  had  better  be 
quite  free  and  copious  in  their  range  of  topics.  And  there  I  might 
have  stopped,  but  I  paused  long  enough  to  put  on  a  rider  in  the 


60  YALE  LECTURES. 

cautionary  remark,  "  You  must  be  careful  to  make  this  your  wide 
sermonizing,  your  selection  of  topics  from  the  entire  creation,  safe, 
by  keeping  your  ever-sermonizing  mind  intensely  Christian."  Sev- 
eral other  items  of  amplification  occurred  to  me  which  I  did  not 
use.  This,  for  example — how  shall  a  man  determine  the  order  of 
his  topics ;  by  the  order  of  the  Christian  year  as  in  the  Protestant 
Episcopal  Church  ;  by  the  ever-fluctuating  state  of  his  congregation  ; 
by  a  pre-arranged  round  and  round  of  theologizings,  and  appli- 
cations thereof  to  life ;  by  the  to  and  fro  of  his  own  mental 
idiosyncracies  ;  or  by  what  ? — a  fruitful  inquiry,  you  see,  and  having 
amplification  enough  in  it  for  an  hour.  Moreover,  I  had  thought  I 
might  mention  this  curious  little  fact : — that  a  topic  selected  on 
Monday,  say,  snugged  away  in  the  mind,  and  let  alone  there, 
absolutely,  for  three  or  four  days  and  nights ;  not  being  brooded 
and  worked  over  at  all,  I  mean  ;  on  examination  at  the  end  of  that 
time,  will  be  found  to  have  sprouted  into  a  very  considerable  affair 
— your  mind  has  seen  to  that  unconsciously — you  have  had  nothing 
to  do  with  it — and  (what  is  stranger  still)  experience  proves,  (my 
experience  does)  that  if  you  had  been  sound  asleep  all  those  four  days, 
some  sprouting  would  have  come  to  pass.  Scores  of  times  after  I 
have  gone  to  bed  Friday  night  I  have  made  a  little  stir  in  me,  and 
got  my  next  Sunday's  sermon  decided  on,  and  then  on  waking 
Saturday  morning  have  noticed  a  marked  advance  in  me  of  that 
topic — it  has  swollen — it  has  put  out  feelers  and  drawn  in  correlative 
thoughts — very  likely  it  is  all  ready  for  me  to  begin  writing  on. 

That  was  one  of  my  intended  amplifications.  And  still  another 
amplification  that  invited  me,  was  a  careful  statement  of  the  reasons 
for  my  assertion,  that  a  wide  array  of  topics  is  better  than  a  narrow 
one. 

Now  notice ;  another  lecturer,  even  if  he  had  had  the  same 
scheme,  would  have  made  a  different  amplification  of  that  first 
head,  The  Topic — where  then  do  amplifications  come  from,  and 
how  can  a  poor,  dry-minded,  constipated  mortal  get  them  ?  I  answer  : 
there  is  only  one  way,  and  that  is  to  amplify  the  man.  At  any  rate 
that  is  the  first  thing.  I  know,  some  if  amplified  to  the  extreme  limits 
of  human  amplification,  would  not  be  voluminous  amplifiers.  Their 
organ  of  language  is  small.  Or  they  have  an  inborn  silentness  like 
Gen.  Grant,  and  the  North  American  Indian,  and  like  many  a  big- 
headed  and  much-thinking  man  in  the  back-country.  Thomas 
Carlyle  used  to  preach  that  amplification  is  the  worst  known  cure, 


YALE  LECTURES.  61 

and  Mr.  Emerson  seems  to  have  been  caught  in  the  same  sorrowful 
idea  now  and  then — as  for  instance,  when  he  wrote  : — "  come  now, 
let  us  go  alone  a  whole  Pythagorean  lustrum,  and  be  dumb." 

That  doctrine  may  do  for  some,  but  not  for  ordained  preachers. 
What  they  want  is  volume  and  facility.  And  the  way  to  get  it,  I 
say,  is  to  make  the  preachers  themselves  voluminous.  That  first. 
Any  natural  silentness  in  them  can  be  dealt  with  after  we  get  them 
enlarged.  We  don't  want  the  dam  opened  till  there  are  waters  back 
of  it.  That  was  what  angered  Carlyle  ;  that  there  should  be  so 
much  openness,  and  sound,  all  around,  and  so  little  real  flow. 

The  amplification  of  men,  as  preliminary  to  solidly  amplified 
discourses  !  A  large  subject.  But  there  is  where  discourses  come 
from — from  men  ! 

For  example  : — When  I  said — a  preacher's  subjects  should  be 
taken  from  a  wide  field,  I  said  it  out  of  the  observation  and  study 
of  many  years.  When  I  said,  a  thoroughly  Christian  mind  in  a 
preacher  will  surely  christianize  all  subjects  that  come  into  it,  I  said 
it  as  having  noticed  that,  hundreds  of  times.  When  I  said,  a  whole 
Friday  night's  unconscious  incubation  on  an  idea,  will  hatch  out  a 
sermon  often,  I  said  it  because  I  have  hatched  them,  and  know. 
When  I  said,  under  another  head,  that  if  a  man  goes  to  his  study 
and  sets  his  mind  bubbling  on  a  subject,  and  faithfully  records  every 
bubble,  those  recordings  will  be  mutually  related,  and  will  take  their 
place  naturally  therefore  in  the  sermon  which  he  proceeds  then  to 
organize  out  of  them,  and  not  one  bubble  be  lost  very  likely  ;  I  said  it 
out  of  my  own  experiences  on  the  point,  repeated  hundreds  of  times. 

An  amplifier  then — a  real  one — a  solid  one — a  nutritious  one 
— an  amplifier,  who,  while  he  has  some  diction,  is  not  all  diction — 
an  amplifier  whose  movement  is  a  reiterated  birth-throe  and  an 
eternal  refutation  of  Carlyle's  doctrine  of  silence, — such  an  one  has 
lived  years  and  years  (this  business  takes  time,  and  a  young  man  need 
not  despise  himself  if  he  does  not  feel  absolutely  inexhaustible  right 
off) — he  also  has  read  a  good  deal,  has  read  digestively,  and  with  a 
constant  appropriation  of  facts,  principles  and  vitalities — moreover 
he  has  done  mountains  of  solitary  thinking — he  "has  become  a  me- 
thodical thinker  ;  that  is,  when  his  mind  moves  down  upon  a  subject 
it  does  not  go  helter-skelter  like  a  flurry  of  volunteer  citizens  into 
an  enemy's  country,  but  with  the  organized  orderliness  of  an  army, 
wherein  each  man  is  a  two-fold  force  because  a  unit  in  an  organi- 
zation.    Method  is  power ; — he  has  become  a  methodical  thinker, 


62  YALE  LECTURES. 

also  he  has  learned  that  most  teeming  of  all  secrets,  the  secret  of 
analysis  ;  and  now,  whatever  subject  comes  under  his  inspection, 
suffers  what  the  nebulae  of  the  firmament  suffer  when  brought  under 
the  astronomer's  glass  ;  what  is  single  becomes  plural,  and  the 
plural  more  plural,  in  an  endless  process  of  separation.  In  nothing 
are  sermonizers  more  differenced  than  in  this ;  one  moves  in  large 
and  excessive  discursiveness,  and  gets  his  amplification  by  sweep- 
ing into  his  sermon  a  great  amount  of  external  material,  anecdotes, 
history,  personal  recollections,  the  last  book,  the  last  murder,  and 
so  on,  (all  good  when  well  used,)  which  he  has  come  across  in  his 
objective  travels ; — the  other  man  chooses  a  single  thought,  or 
principle,  (the  more  single  the  better,)  and  proceeds  to  explicate 
it,  fundamentally ;  he  runs  it  back  to  its  roots,  he  knows  before  he 
begins  that  that  thing  so  simple  and  innocent-looking  on  the  face 
of  it,  has  any  amount  of  contents  ;  more  contents  than  he  will 
know  what  to  do  with  when  he  gets  into  them.  So  he  gets  into 
them,  he  defines,  he  analyzes,  he  analyzes  again,  he  pursues  things 
into  their  relations,  he  finds  that  the  universe  is  one  great  ganglion 
and  that  any  subject  is  a  universal  subject ; — the  good  amplifier  has 
learned  to  analyze,  I  repeat ;  and  finally  (for  I  must  hasten)  he  has 
been  through  a  multitude  of  joys  and  sorrows,  he  has  known  love 
with  its  many  zests  and  its  many  inevitable  lamentations,  he  has 
seen  the  dying  die,  he  has  looked  out  on  the  wide  woe  and  mystery 
of  life,  he  has  become  full-hearted  and  full-minded,  and  now,  when 
he  is  called  to  face  assemblies  of  mortal  creatures  and  speak  to 
them,  he  has  somewhat  to  say,  and  he  feels  sometimes  as  though  he 
could  speak  forever.  He  may  not  be  voluble,  (God  forbid)  but  he 
is  heavy  laden  with  meanings,  and  oftimes  in  his  common  sayings 
you  will  catch  the  flow  of  a  deep  undersong,  just  as  in  many  a 
word  of  Jesus,  given  us  especially  by  St.  John,  it  has  sometimes 
seemed  to  me,  for  the  moment,  that  I  could  scarcely  endure  them, 
they  are  so  fraught  with  seriousness,  and  tenderness,  and  forebod- 
ing, and  moral  firmness  and  majesty,  and  I  know  not  what  besides, 
as  of  a  man  speaking  out  of  an  infinite  experience,  out  of  an 
infinite  meditativen'ess,  and  out  of  infinite  agitations  of  sensibility. 
A  great  man  makes  a  great  sermon,  and  O  !  what  clear  effects  of 
greatness  are  made  now  and  then  by  quite  measurable  and  even 
moderate  men,  who  have  turned  their  powers  into  the  service  of 
God  with  a  complete  consecration,  and  have  opened  themselves  to 
the  infioodings  of  his  blessed  Spirit. 


YALE  LECTURES.  63 

My  Brethren,  I  should  naturally  end  here  with  some  attempt 
to  discriminate  between  a  sermon  and  a  lecture,  my  idea  being  that 
a  sermon  gets  to  be  a  sermon,  and  saves  itself  from  being  a  lecture, 
by  being  made,  and  delivered  in  the  Holy  Ghost. 

I  had  thought  to  cover  that  ground  on  another  occasion,  but  I 
shall  not,  I  see  now. 


ORIGINALITY  IN  THE 
PREACHER. 


I  am  about  to  speak  to  you  on  originality  in  the  preacher  and 
I  will  try,  to  begin  with,  to  get  down  to  some  clear  and  vindicable 
conception  of  Originality.  Accepting  a  clue  from  the  word  itself,  I 
should  say  that  an  original  sermonizer  is  one  who  originates  the 
thoughts  that  he  uses.  That  seems  obvious.  But  a  man  who  does 
that  is  sure  to  have  certain  other  peculiarities  springing  out  of  that ; 
and,  in  the  popular  apprehension  of  the  subject,  therefore,  an  origi- 
nal man  is  one  who  not  merely  originates  the  thoughts  with  which 
he  stocks  his  sermons,  but  also  has  thoughts  in  practically  unlimited 
quantities — they  swarm  him  ;  and,  moreover,  they  are  very  observa- 
bly different  from  those  of  other  men. 

An  original  preacher  then,  has  those  three  marks.  First,  his 
thoughts  are  his  own ;  next,  he  is  fertile  in  thoughts ;  and  next,  he 
is  different  from  other  men.  Those  three  elements,  I  say,  enter  into 
the  general  idea  of  Originality.  In  strictness,  he  is  original  who 
originates  ;  but  he  who  originates,  is  therefore  prolific,  and  unique  ; 
and  it  is  sufficiently  exact  for  our  present  purpose,  if  we  include  all 
that  under  the  one  term  original. 

But  now,  as  to  that  rather  great  matter  of  origination,  let  me 
ask  : — Where  do  our  thoughts  come  from  ?  When  a  preacher  origi- 
nates his  own,  where  do  they  come  from,  and  when  he  gets  them 
somewhere  else,  where  is  that  somewhere  else?  An  important 
question  for  men  who  are  public  preachers  and  who  are  required  to 
speak  ten,  twenty,  thirty,  and  more  years  to  the  same  congregation, 
except  as  the  perpetual  play  of  death  and  birth  withdraws  a  familiar 


YALE  LECTURES.  65 

face  now  and  then,  and  sifts  in  an  occasional  new  mind  :  Where 
shall  thoughts  be  found,  and  where  is  the  place  of  them  ?  Many  a 
young  man  in  the  first  agonies  of  production,  feels  like  replying,  in 
those  other  words  of  Job  :  "  Man  knoweth  not  the  price  thereof, 
neither  is  it  found  in  the  land  of  the  living.  The  depth  saith,  it  is 
not  in  me,  and  the  sea  saith,  it  is  not  with  me.  *  *  It  is  hid 
from  the  eyes  of  all  living,  and  kept  close  from  the  fowls  of  the  air. 
*  *  Where,  O  where,  shall  wisdom  be  found  and  where  is  the 
place  of  understanding."  And  even  middle-aged  ministers,  of  a 
certain  second-grade  sort,  are  not  without  a  touch  of  the  same 
lamentation  at  times.  "  Why  did  you  leave  Philadelphia,"  said  I  to  a 
partially  light-weight  doctor  of  divinity — "  Because  I  had  nothing 
more  to  say,"  he  replied,  frankly,  from  the  bottom  of  his  heart. 
And  after  a  few  years,  I  noticed  in  the  newspapers,  that  he  had 
moved  on  again.  He  hadn't  yet  discovered  the  hiding  place  of 
wisdom.  A  friend  of  mine  summed  up  that  whole  class  of  preach- 
ers under  the  head  of  "squeezed  oranges."  Their  first  one,  two  or 
three  years,  exhausted  their  entire  sap,  and  since  that,  they  have 
been  in  a  condition  more  easily  felt  than  described.  A  condition  in 
which,  let  me  add  chirkly,  no  man  has  any  need  to  be.  I  consider 
it  no  egotism  to  say  that  I  never  saw  the  day  when  I  was  not 
pretty  conscious,  that  the  fountain  which  gave  me  my  last  discourse 
was  more  than  able  to  give  me  another,  and  then  another  and 
another,  in  everlasting  undiminished  flow.  Of  course  when  you 
have  taken  out  of  yourself  several  thousand  sermons  and  small  talks, 
you  know  your  own  mind  something  better  than  you  did  when  you 
had  taken  out  only  a  dozen  ;  and  are  more  assured  of  its  bottomless 
fecundity ;  but  I  courageously  maintain  that  every  mind  (except  a 
fool)  is  bottomless,  and  as  non-exhaustible  as  the  waters  of  the  sky ; 
and  if  that  Philadelphia  man  touched  bottom  in  his  mind,  it  was  a 
delusion — it  was  not  bottom — he  did  not  know  how  to  handle  his 
own  mind — he  had  not  come  into  the  secret  of  generative  intellec- 
tual methods — he  might  as  well  say  he  had  gone  down  the  whole 
sub-marine  five  miles  of  the  Atlantic  Ocean,  and  was  able  to  declare 
its  shallowness. 

But  where  do  thoughts  come  from  ?  They  come  from  just  two 
sources,  namely :  from  your  own  interiors,  and  from  the  manifold, 
endless  exteriors,  by  which  all  men  are  surrounded  : — these  exteri- 
ors being  gotten  hold  of  by  reading,  and  by  observations  and  by 
experience.     As  to  thoughts  from  the  interiors,  I  may  say  of  them, 


66  YALE  LECTURES. 

that  doubtless  even  they  are  heavily  charged  with  exterior  elements 
— that  is,  all  of  a  man's  reading,  observation  and  experience,  his 
whole  life-long,  has  gradually  passed  into  his  structure  and  substance, 
to  make  his  originating  mind  exactly  what  it  is  at  any  given  moment 
of  origination,  and  to  make  any  given  product  or  thought  of  his 
mind  precisely  what  it  is  ;  but  those  exterior  elements  are  not  in  him 
in  any  way  of  recollection  ;  in  that  thinking  of  his  from  the  interior  he 
is  not  conscious  of  exteriors  ;  his  whole  feeling  is  like  Belshazzar's  ; 
I  did  this — this  idea  is  mine — nobody  told  it  to  me — I  never  read  it 
anywhere — or,  to  draw  on  Job  again,  this  path  no  fowl  knoweth, 
and  the  vulture's  eye  hath  not  seen  it ;  it  is  my  secret,  my  child, 
bone  of  my  bone,  and  flesh  of  my  flesh — just  as  the  spider  says 
proudly  : — "  that  web  is  this  individual  spider  spun  out,"  although 
all  the  while  he  knows,  if  he  is  an  educated  spider,  that  the  inward 
material  of  those  fine  yarns,  are  the  amazing  result  of  the  vital  pro- 
cesses of  his  body,  taking  the  various  external  spider-foods  and  work- 
ing them  over  by  some  unsearched  chemistry  into  a  brand  new 
form  ;  a  form  as  unlike  the  component  foods  of  which  it  is  made,  as 
mud  is  unlike  the  heaven-white  lily  into  which  it  runs  up. 

It  is  the  one  distinction  then,  of  the  class  of  thoughts  which  I 
have  called  thoughts  from  the  interior,  that  they  seem  to  themselves, 
and  are,  in-born,  in-generated,  not  beholden  to  any  conceivable 
thing  in  the  universe  for  their  origin,  excepting  to  that  live  mind  there 
privately  thinking. 

Now,  I  suppose  that  most  persons,  at  first,  would  say  : — only 
such  a  thinker  as  that  is  original ;  and  the  preacher  who  gets  his 
sermons  from  the  great  second  source  of  possible  supply,  the  source 
objective,  books,  nature,  life,  the  million-voiced  say-so  of  the  much- 
speaking  human  family,  he  is  not  original ;  he  is  a  borrower,  and 
very  possibly  a  plagiarist : — he  is  not  a  conscious  plagiarist  in  most 
cases,  but  if  his  discourses  are  remorselessly  looked  into,  it  will  be 
found  that  they  have  a  strong  savor  of  other  people,  and  do  not 
savor  enough  of  his  own  self — he  certainly  is  not  original ; — the 
original  man  pours  forth  always  from  his  own  contents. 

All  that  is  true,  but  it  is  as  possible  for  the  profusely  objec- 
tive man,  the  great  reader,  the  great  observer,  the  great  man-of- 
affairs,  the  great  memorizer  of  facts,  events  and  minima,  the  excur- 
sive and  wide-plundering  man,  it  is  as  possible  for  him  to  be  origi- 
nal in  the  profound  and  self-evolving  way  already  described,  as  it  is 
for  the  man  who  never  reads,  and  never  observes  at  all,  but  sits  in 


YALE  LECTURES.  67 

his  studious  solitude,  in  severe  abstraction,  and  takes  good  care  that 
what  thoughts  he  has  shall  be  his  own  and  shall  smack  most  relish- 
ably  of  his  personality. 

I  admit  that,  if  a  man  leads  an  intellectual  life  strongly  exter- 
nal, and  is  a  diligent  in-gatherer,  there  is  danger  that  his  original 
powers  will  be  buried  under  by  his  acquisitions,  and  he  therefore 
not  be  original ;  but  this  bad  result  is  not  necessary.  If  he  thinks 
more  than  he  reads,  if  he  spends  more  time  over  his  riches  of  mate- 
rial when  collected  than  he  does  in  collecting  it ;  if  while  he  is  col- 
lecting it,  he  is  analyzing  it,  searching  for  its  underlying  principles, 
generalizing  upon  it,  in  short,  rationalizing  on  it  in  the  use  of  all  the 
higher  forces  of  his  mind  ;  if  he  reads  reflectively,  critically,  rumin- 
atively,  judicially,  and  does  all  his  excursive  work  in  a  thoroughly 
attent  and  vital  way,  then  inevitably  what  happens  to  the  spider 
happens  to  him ;  the  foods  of  his  mind  become  mind,  they  increase 
his  mass  and  his  potentiality,  they  modify  the  quality  of  his  intellect, 
they  are  subtly  distributed  through  his  entire  mental  organism,  his 
entire  personality,  in  fact,  just  as  all  our  physical  food  atoms,  after 
proper  transmutation,  are  infallibly  distributed  for  the  repair  of  our 
bodies  and  the  replenishment  of  their  vigor.  And  when  all  this  has 
happened  to  our  much-reading  man,  and  he  is  called  upon  to  put 
himself  forth  in  discourse,  behold  !  there  is  nothing  plagiaristic 
about  him ;  he  falls  now  under  the  first  class  of  thinkers,  the  indis- 
putably original  men,  he  is  not  conscious  of  his  materials,  neither  is 
any  one  else  aware  of  them  ;  the  fact  is,  those  materials  have  eter- 
nally disappeared  in  him,  and  all  you  see  is  a  man ;  an  originating 
man  : — theoretically  we  know  that  there  are  a  great  many  good  books 
in  that  man  and  a  great  grist  of  other  things,  a  sort  of  maelstrom  he 
is ;  but  visibly  we  cannot  prove  it,  we  cannot  lay  our  hand  on  the 
books  and  the  grist ;  when  he  speaks,  it  sounds  just  as  Adam 
sounded  in  Paradise  before  he  had  read  a  thing  or  fairly  seen  anything  ; 
his  contents  are  all  vital  and  assimilated,  and  the  only  way  you 
know  he  ever  read  anything  in  particular,  is  the  same  by  which  you 
know  a  strong  and  digestive  eater,  namely,  his  mind  has  blood  in  it, 
and  endurance  and  endless  performance  and  when  he  gets  hold  of 
you,  you  feel  that  your  doom  is  at  the  door. 

I  like  to  describe  this  sort  of  God's  creature.  There  is  some- 
what magnetic  in  him  and  the  touch  of  his  splendid  virility  is  enough 
to  make  one  feel  himself  immortal. 

I  suppose  you  have  seen  these  thick-set,  sappy,  disgusting  green 


68  YALE  LECTURES. 

worms,  that  stretch  themselves  out  on  the  .twigs  of  the  trees  and 
lazily  eat  the  green  leaves,  and  eat,  and  eat,  forever ;  and  are  so 
lazy  that  they  will  not  take  the  trouble  to  transform  their  green  food 
into  a  decent  flesh  color,  but  lay  it  around  on  their  miserable  bodies 
unchanged  (so  it  looks — I  use  the  language  of  appearance,  of 
course.)  Well,  those  creatures  represent  the  preachers  who  are 
overloaded  with  undigested  externals.  The  leaves  they  have  eaten 
show  everywhere.  You  can  tell  what  they  ate  last.  Sometimes 
they  put  it  forth  in  plain  lumps,  the  original  thing  without  a  pre- 
tense of  reductio  ad  pabulum,  though  more  often  it  is  disguised  un- 
der some  show  of  transformation.  But  it  is  a  low  and  stealing 
piece  of  business — the  whole  thing — and  they  have  no  right  to 
preach. 

But  whereunto  shall  I  liken  the  better  sort  ?  They  are  like 
yonder  flowering  bush.  It  has  lived  on  several  kinds  of  rather  un- 
promising food.  It  has  eaten  dirt.  It  has  even  taken  up  the  insuf- 
ferable rankness  of  animal  decomposition.  And,  better  and  more 
decent,  it  has  nourished  itself  by  the  air  and  the  light,  and  the  rain, 
and  the  subtle  cool  ministries  of  the  night.  x\nd  lo  !  the  rose. 
That  plant  had  life,  and  vital  cunning,  and  knew  what  it  was  here 
for.  That  plant  was  original.  It  needed  much  material,  but  it  did 
not  propose  to  be  lumbered  by  it.  No,  it  struck  for  a  complete 
victory  over  its  material — and  got  it.  For  what  can  be  more  com- 
plete than  to  make  over  dirt,  and  the  like,  into  a  rose-leaf,  that 
blooming,  beautiful,  fragrant,  and  almost  spiritualized  thing,  a  thing 
so  exquisite  that  God  might  pluck  it  for  himself  in  heaven.  There 
is  originality  for  you. 

The  flower  is  original ;  the  green  worm  is  a  visible  plagiarist. 

If  I  have  now  sufficiently  defined  the  original  preacher,  I  am 
ready  to  draw  out  a  list  of  considerations  in  defence  of  originality 
and  in  praise  of  it. 

And,  First.  Referring  to  the  original  man,  as  different  from 
other  men — dwelling  a  moment  on  that  particular  element  of  origi- 
nality, I  submit  to  you  this  fact — that  every  mind  born  into  the 
world  is  specifically  unlike  every  other,  by  the  operation  of  irresis- 
tible causes  ; — as  much  unlike  certainly,  as  each  human  face  is  unlike 
every  other  that  ever  was  or  ever  will  be  ;  which  fact  does  not  look 
at  all  as  though  God  meant  his  creatures  to  be  otherwise  than  dis- 
similar one  from  the  other.  If  the  new-born  mind  is  in  every  case 
unique  and  unprecedented,  why  should  it  not  be  developed  in  the 


YALE  LECTURES.  69 

line  of  that  original  start.  Why  rub  down  its  face-marks  in  a  blas- 
phemous attempt  to  make  everybody  alike  ?  Why  conventionalize 
it  by  slow  degrees  !  Why  work  over  its  aboriginal  tone,  till  you 
could  not  tell  it  from  all  other  tones.  God  does  not  operate  in  that 
way  in  Nature,  neither  does  he  thus  work  anywhere.  Every  animal 
has  his  race-lines,  every  tree  has  its  race-lines,  every  plant  its  char- 
acteristic career.  Even  that  sappy  green  worm — to  tell  the  truth  at 
last — is  a  perfectly  individualized  creature,  and  when  he  is  green,  it 
is  not  because  he  has  consented  to  let  the  leaves  he  eats  register  ex- 
actly their  own  color  on  him,  but  because  as  he  proceeds  with  his 
digestion  and  what  not,  it  is  a  peculiarity  of  his  constitution  to  pre- 
fer to  be  green,  just  as  it  is  constitutional  in  the  lily  stalk  to  prefer 
to  blossom  white,  and  in  the  rose  to  prefer  that  fascinating  flush  of 
which  I  spoke.  Likewise,  every  spring  is  itself  and  no  other,  and 
every  morning  is,  and  every  cyclone ;  and  every  tide-swell  has  its 
recognizable  idiosyncracies.  Likewise,  in  the  unfoldings  of  history, 
God  strikes  in  to  make  the  great  movement  racy ;  each  era  has  its 
own  features,  each  crisis  gets  to  be  a  crisis  by  foregoing  preparations 
that  are  original,  and  each  crisis  dissolves  away  into  the  common 
flow  of  events  again  in  a  manner  quite  its  own. 

Why  then  should  any  one  be  afraid  of  originality  in  men,  and  in 
preachers.  Why  want  to  have  us  all  twins,  and  fac-similes  !  all 
think  alike,  express  ourselves  alike,  look  alike,  sound  alike,  in  a 
weary,  universal  humdrum  of  thought  and  life.  I  recollect  the  perils 
of  originality,  and  shall  throw  in  a  cautionary  word  or  two  on  that 
point  by  and  by.  Meanwhile,  let  us  all  accept  our  birthright,  and 
calmly  be  ourselves. 

Again,  only  those  who  are  original  speak  with  authority.  There 
is  a  tell-tale  tone  in  the  hearsay  man,  which  he  cannot  suppress.  I 
suppose  it  is  the  ineradicable  integrity  of  the  man's  nature,  refusing 
to  put  off  on  the  public  a  stolen  thing.  He  wants  to  do  it,  and  in- 
tends to  do  it,  and  tries  to  do  it,  but  lying  is  cross  to  certain  princi- 
cipal  parts  of  our  nature,  and  no  bad  thing  can  be  perfectly  carried 
out,  thank  God.     Murder  will  out.     So  will  borrowed  preaching. 

When  I  said,  those  who  are  original  speak  with  authority,  you 
thought  of  our  Lord,  I  presume ;  as  you  well  might,  because  the 
entire  secret  of  his  weight  of  speech,  was  that  he  spoke  what  he 
himself  had  discovered  and  nothing  else,  and  had  discovered  a  good 
deal  to  speak.  There  were  traditions  enough  in  his  land,  and  in  his 
training  ;  there  were  prepossessions,  prejudices,  bigotries,  a  powerful 


70  YALE  LECTURES. 

quantity  of  book-lumber  oppressing  the  public  mind  and  a  thoroughly 
elaborated  and  imperious  conventionalism,  after  the  manner  of  all 
very  old  countries  and  races ;  and  into  this  great  system  of  fixed 
things,  and  respectable  things,  and  things  prescribed,  Jesus  came 
with  his  wise,  direct,  intuitive  eyes,  his  absolutely  unbiased  mind,  his 
eyes  of  infinite,  original  discovery,  and  what  he  saw  he  said,  with  the 
calmness  and  courage  of  first-hand  knowledge.  On  the  one  hand  no 
egotism  and  on  the  other  hand  no  flinching ;  and  those  people  who 
massed  about  him  and  listened,  felt  a  power  which  they  could  not 
explain,  in  any  full  analysis,  but  which  they  explained  well  enough, 
and  better  than  they  knew,  when  they  said  : — "  He  speaks  as  one 
having  authority,  and  not  as  the  scribes."  He  was  an  original  man  ; 
and  his  ministers  have  a  right  to  be,  in  their  measure. 

Every  now  and  then  the  travelling  agent  for  some  book  wants 
me  to  put  my  name  down  in  certification  to  the  value  of  his  volume. 
"  But  I  never  read  the  book,"  say  I,  "  and  I  am  so  situated  at 
present  that  I  cannot  read  it."  "  But  here  is  a  list  of  eminent 
clergymen  and  others  who  have  read  it,  and  are  all  delighted  with  it. 
It  is  the  safest  thing  in  the  world  therefore  for  you  to  give  me  your 
name."  To  which  I  reply  : — "  Nothing  were  safer,  as  respects  the 
risk  that  I  shall  lend  my  name  to  a  poor  and  sloshy  volume  ;  but 
my  name  there  written  in  your  great  array  of  names  will  be  taken 
by  many  people  to  mean  that  I  have  myself  examined  your  book 
and  do  therefore  and  thus  know  it  to  be  a  good  thing.  Not  one  in 
a  score  of  the  people,  taken  as  they  run,  would  surmise  that  I  am 
not  an  original  witness  in  this  business.  Almost  the  whole  value  of 
my  name  lies  in  their  lamb-like  trust  in  me  at  exactly  that  point." 

So  the  man  never  gets  my  name.  I  am  not  going  to  be  a 
public  preacher  for  that  book  merely  because  a  body  of  intelligent 
doctors  of  divinity,  a  hundred  strong  perhaps,  together  with  a  hun- 
dred laymen  equally  intelligent,  have  discovered  it  to  be  an  excel- 
lent publication,  and  are  preaching  for  it. 

And  I  do  not  see  but,  in  all  preaching,  the  original  witness  is 
the  only  one.  My  Brethren,  it  is  one  of  our  main  distinctions  that 
we  are  witnesses  for  Christ.  Theoretically,  that  is  according  to  all 
Biblical  teaching  on  the  matter,  we  are  that ;  and  then,  so  far  as 
public  power  is  concerned,  we  do  not  amount  to  anything  first- 
class,  and  irresistible,  except  as  we  are  witness  bearers.  In  other 
words,  we  must  deliver  our  own  thoughts — or  what  is  the  same 
thing,  we  must  be  original.     If  we  dispense  theology,  it  must  be 


YALE  LECTURES.  71 

strictly  the  theology  which  we  ourselves  have  been  able  to  discover ; 
or  if  we  passs  over  into  the  emotional  field  and  discourse  on  matters 
of  experience,  we  must  get  our  great  emphasis  out  of  our  own  expe- 
rience, and  in  so  far  as  we  preach  the  experiences  of  other  people, 
unverified  as  yet  in  our  own  hearts,  our  perceptive  hearer  will  note 
that  there  is  somewhat  hollow  in  the  resound  of  our  emphasis.  A 
photograph  of  a  landscape  is  one  thing,  and  the  photograph  of  that 
photograph  is  another,  always  and  most  visibly.  It  may  be  a  nice 
picture,  this  last — in  fact  it  generally  looks  smoother  and  handsomer 
than  the  other  somehow ;  moreover  the  natural  scene  of  which  it 
professes  to  be  a  representation  is  plainly  there — nevertheless  every- 
body much  prefers  the  first  photograph — there  is  a  refreshing  real- 
ism about  it — it  is  a  transcript  of  the  originality  of  Nature  herself 
— it  is,  as  we  say,  an  original  picture. 

So  the  preacher ;  in  order  to  be  realistic,  he  must  tell  what  he 
knows,  and  not  be  dressing  up  the  discoveries  and  experiences  of 
other  men. 

But  here  some  one  of  you  in  his  own  mind  will  interpose  the 
suggestion — "  We  young  men,  have  not  had  time  to  discover  much, 
neither  have  we  had  any  great  range  of  experience  ;  nevertheless  we 
are  on  the  eve  of  being  preachers,  and  we  are  on  the  eve  of  being 
overhauled  by  an  ecclesiastical  body,  which  will  want  us  to  have  a 
clear  opinion  on  all  theology,  and  will  very  likely  withhold  ordina- 
tion if  we  cannot  stand  up  to  all  the  Articles  of  Faith  of  the  Chris- 
tian body  to  which  we  belong ;  And  now,  Mr.  Burton,  what  shall  we 
do  ?  We  can't  be  original  very  much,  we  can't  be  witnesses  more 
than  about  so  far,  and  yet  we  seem  to  be  about  to  be  forced  to  talk 
very  large,  and  talk  from  one  to  two  hundred  times  in  a  year. 

Well,  that  does  seem  to  be  a  crushing  state  of  things,  and  I  shall 
enjoy  remarking  upon  it. 

I  think  it  is  plain  that  you  must  retail  some  hearsay,  but  in  so 
far  as  you  are  incorrigibly  honest  to  the  bottom  of  your  heart,  you 
will  instinctively  put  forth  your  hearsay  with  some  subtle  indication, 
somehow,  that  it  is  hearsay. 

A  friend  of  mine  was  once  put  in  a  tight  place.  He  was  called 
upon  to  act  as  showman  to  a  stereopticon,  for  an  evening.  Half  of 
the  views  to  be  exhibited  were  taken  from  Europe  north  of  the 
Alps,  and  half  from  Europe  south  of  these  mountains.  Now 
it  chanced  that  my  friend  had  never  been  south  of  the  Alps,  and, 
as    I   had,    he   urgently  besought  me    to    mount  the    stage   when 


72  YALE  LECTURES. 

he  had  done  northern  Europe  and  do  the  rest.  But  I 
declined,  feeling  and  saying  that  he  could  beat  any  of  us, 
whether  he  had  visited  the  scenes  or  not.  For  he  had,  in  large 
measure,  the  gift  of  speech.  So  I  went  to  the  lecture  with  perfect 
confidence,  but  awondering  in  the  secret  depths  of  my  mind,  after 
all,  whether  the  lecturer  would  slow  any  when  he  crossed  the  Alps. 
At  first  he  did  not.  He  had  got  up  a  good  momentum,  and  he 
went  over  kiteing  and  struck  Italy  with  the  realistic  air  of  all  ob- 
servers. It  seemed  to  me  that  he  was  going  to  take  us  through  that 
new  country  and  not  let  out  his  ignorance.  But  he  had  been  in  the 
ministry  a  good  while,  and  his  conscience  began  to  bother  him,  I 
suppose,  and  he  pretty  soon  seemed  tired,  and  at  last  stopped  and 
confessed.  He  said  he  had  not  been  there,  but  would  go  on  as  well 
as  he  could.  And  he  went  on  and  was  most  interesting,  too.  I 
would  not  have  had  him  stop  for  the  world. 

Gentlemen,  when  that  council  ask  you,  as  a  member  of  my  or- 
daining council  asked  me  by  way  of  determining  my  soundness  on 
the  subject  of  the  Trinity  : — "  If  the  Holy  Ghost  were  killed  would 
it  kill  God  ;  "  do  you  say  : — "  I  will  make  shift  to  answer,  but  I  am 
young  to  the  councils  of  God."  Because  it  will  be  interesting  to 
have  you  answer ;  and  a  comfort.  And  after  you  are  settled,  and 
must  preach  on  many  things  that  you  have  not  been  able  as  yet  to 
explore  in  thoroughly  original  effort,  when  you  go  over  the  Alps , 
you  may  reasonably  slow  up  a  little.  I  should  certainly  go  over. 
There  is  a  south-lying  Europe — a  rich,  beautiful,  historical  region ; 
and  the  fact  that  you  have  not  been  there  does  not  alter  that.  Mil- 
lions have  been  there.  So  you  had  better  glib  along  and  tell  what  they 
say.  It  would  be  dreadful  to  confine  your  congregation  to  Northern 
Europe,  merely  because  that  is  the  only  part  you  have  visited. 
God's  creation  is  pretty  large.  And  his  grace-region  is  pretty 
large.  And  what  we  cannot  personally  visit,  we  had  better  read 
about,  and  then  proclaim  as  hearsay.  There  are  plenty  of  wit- 
nesses to  certain  points  of  doctrine  and  experience  on  which  you 
are  not  a  witness ;  you  are  too  young  and  you  have  not  thought 
enough  nor  prayed  enough — and  you  thoroughly  believe  their  testimo- 
ny, and  therefore,  when  you  give  it  out  to  your  people  you  need  not  do 
it  in  a  half  and  half  way,  though  you  can  never  really  thunder  and 
boom,  and  jump  into  the  emphasis  with  your  whole  weight  and  in 
perfect  gusto,  except  when  you  are  displaying  the  north  country 


YALE  LECTURES.  73 

And  your  people  will  let  it  be  so.  They  are  not  fools,  neither 
are  the  ecclesiastical  councils  fools.  All  sensible  councils  prefer 
that  the  young  man  should  not  be  too  knowing.  They  like  to  hear 
which  way  he  is  headed,  and  what  he  best  likes,  and  a  few  things  of 
that  sort — and  they  like  to  toll  him  out  into  deep-sea  soundings  to 
find  how  well  he  can  tread  water,  and  whether  he  is  honest  enough 
not  to  pretend  that  his  feet  touch  bottom — and  after  that,  and  pos- 
sibly a  flirt  or  two  of  gymnastics  among  themselves,  unnecessary  but 
entertaining,  they  are  ready  to  go  on  and  do  the  thing  that  ought  to 
be  done,  namely,  put  the  young  man  into  the  ministry  with  con- 
gratulations, thanksgivings,  and  their  best  love. 

It  is  not  easy  to  draw  the  line  between  Authority  in  religious 
things,  on  the  one  hand,  and  Individual  Liberty  on  the  other — or 
rather,  the  line  is  easy  enough,  but  it  is  hard  to  live  exactly  upon  it. 
The  line  runs  thus  : 

In  so  far  as  I  can  search  for  myself  I  must  do  it — in  all  things. 
That  is  Originality.  Next  I  must  diligently  take  counsel  of  other 
men,  and  listen  to  them  with  absolute  openness  of  mind.  And 
now,  having  gathered  in  all  possible  data,  I  must  next  fall  back  upon 
my  own  self,  in  perfect  absolutism  ;  or  call  it  individualism  if  you 
like — in  perfect  individualism  I  must  fall  back.  Perfect  I  say,  that  is, 
in  a  spirit  as  absolute  as  though  no  man  but  me  had  ever  thought  a 
thought ; — and  I  must  decide — decide  my  doctrine,  decide  what  is 
real,  divine  experience.  Whoso  flinches  at  that  point  of  absolutism, 
waives  his  indefeasible  right,  and  smirches  his  own  majesty.  I  tell 
you  there  is  no  manhood  that  does  not  begin  just  there.  Surrender 
there,  and  you  have  opened  the  way  to  every  conceivable  self-sur- 
render and  worthlessness,  both  moral  and  intellectual.  I  know 
the  risks  of  Individualism,  and  what  a  force  of  disintegration  it  often 
is ;  social  life  is  not  possible,  the  state,  church  and  family  are  not 
possible,  history  as  an  organized  development  cannot  be,  and 
civilization  itself  in  its  highest  forms  must  die,  where  the  Ego  is 
pushed  as  some  would  push  it.  But  I  know,  also,  that  where  men 
cease  to  do  their  own  thinking  and  make  their  own  decisions  in  the 
manner  and  under  the  conditions  just  explained,  there  are  no  longer 
any  men,  and  the  various  social  organisms  are  not  worth  keeping 
up.  Their  constituent  units  have  dissolved  into  imbecility,  and  so- 
ciety is  like  a  rotten-timbered  ship. 

It  is  much  asserted  now-a-days,  that  the  spiritual  Ego  is  not 
much  of  a  thing  anyway.     In  the  first  place  it  is  not  spiritual,  but 
6 


74  YALE  LECTURES. 

material.  In  the  next  place,  it  is  not  self-directing  and  free,  but  is 
the  slave  of  irresistible  conditions,  its  environment,  and  all  that. 
In  the  third  place,  of  course  this  Ego  is  puffed  out  at  death  into 
eternal  non-entity. 

And  now  what  are  the  sure  barriers  against  this  flood  of  mate- 
rialistic philosophizing  ?  The  first  barrier  is  a  supernatural  religious 
experience  in  millions  of  men,  and  the  glorious  self-consciousness 
that  comes  of  it.  A  man  regenerate,  and  full  of  regenerate  experi- 
ences, always  believes  in  his  own  spiritual  existence,  his  own  free- 
dom of  will  and  his  own  eternal  perpetuality.  And  he  just  as  much 
believes — and  cannot  help  it — in  a  personal  God.  Those  three 
faiths,  hang  together,  logically  and  in  life,  and  the  more  regenera- 
tions there  are  on  earth,  the  less  materialism  there  is. 
That  is  the  first  barrier,  and  the  greatest. 

But  close  to  that,  is  that  resolute  Individualism,  of  which  I  was 
speaking — that  manful  assertion  of  the  Ego,  which  is  involved  in 
private  judgment.  If  I  think  for  myself,  if  I  produce  my  own 
thoughts,  if  I  settle  my  own  principles,  if  I  make  my  own  discov- 
eries, and  if,  even  when  I  consult  other  people,  and  genially  con- 
sider their  dicta,  I  come  back  at  last  to  the  plain  ground  of  my  own 
kinghood,  and  make  up  my  affirmative,  the  whole  thing  is  so  in- 
tensely self-asserting  and  so  amplifies  and  classifies  my  self-con- 
sciousness, that  I  cannot  in  the  least  endure  this  modern  scientific 
attempt  to  minimize  the  inner  Me,  and  woodenize  it,  and  make  it 
a  two-penny  item  in  the  inevitable  grind  of  mechanical  cause  and 
effect. 

Possibly  the  point  I  make  here  will  seem  to  some  speculative, 
rather  than  practical,  but  I  believe  that  the  true  way  to  resist  ab- 
sorption into  the  creation,  as  a  part  of  its  dead  machinery,  is  to 
magnify  the  personal  interior  man,  practically,  first  by  filling  it  with 
the  life  of  God  through  Jesus  Christ,  and  then  by  original  energiz- 
ing in  the  form  of  truth-searchings,  and  in  the  form  of  independent 
judgments. 

And  if  I  might  turn  aside  a  little  here,  I  could  speak  of  indi- 
vidualism as  indispensable  to  civil  liberty,  and  as  the  only  foundation 
of  a  masculine  and  powerful  literature.  But,  I  was  praising  origi- 
nality in  the  preacher,  and  to  that  I  return  and  once  more  announce 
to  you,  that  originality  in  our  ministers  secures  a  many-sided  con- 
sideration of  all  subjects— and  nothing  else  will  secure  it.  It  is  a 
peculiarity  of  our  subjects  that  they  are  many-sided  ;  and  the  heavi- 


YALE  LECTURES.  75 

est  pull  that  I  have,  I  find,  is  to  get  on  to  all  sides,  by  the  help  of  all 
sorts  of  men.  Left  to  myself,  and  following  the  impulses  of  my  own 
constitution,  I  select  certain  aspects  of  the  Christian  Religion,  in 
front  of  them  sit  down,  and  there  enjoy  myself  forever.  But  along 
comes  Mr.  John  Calvin,  and  invites  me  to  take  a  turn  with  him, 
He  has  numbers  of  things  he  wants  to  show  me.  "  Your  position  is 
good  enough  so  far  as  it  goes,"  he  says  ;  "  God  is  love  and  the  will 
of  man  is  free  enough  to  make  him  responsible,  but  God  is  justice, 
too,  and  God  foreordinates  in  the  most  impressive  manner,  and  I 
want  you  to  walk  all  around  that,  and  mortise  that  into  your  theolog- 
ical system,  and  let  your  system  have  the  advantage  of  it ;  and 
you  too." 

But,  by  the  time  John  Calvin  is  through  with  me,  Horace 
Bushnell  wants  him.  He  has  discovered  some  things,  he  thinks. 
And  before  they  have  finished  with  each  other,  Huxley,  Tyndall,  and 
Herbert  Spencer,  are  waiting  for  them  both.  Calvin  and  Bushnell 
with  all  their  divergency,  one  from  the  other,  are  agreed  that  Chris- 
tianity is  a  supernatural  system  from  first  to  last,  and  those  three 
naturalistic  gentlemen  just  named  have  come  to  expound  the  side  of 
Law,  to  them,  and  to  show  that  the  law-system  of  God  has  never 
been  breached  in  one  instance.  All  religions  are  a  natural  devel- 
opment, they  say,  Jesus  of  Nazareth  was  a  product  of  his  race  and 
his  circumstances  : — a  splendid  product  confessedly,  so  that  unre- 
flective,  unscientific,  and  wonder-mongering  men  and  generations, 
naturally  enough  got  him  deified,  and  encompassed  his  earthly  way 
with  marvels,  heaven-descended  and  miraculous. 

Christianity,  (these  gentlemen  go  on,)  Christianity  has  been  ex- 
hibited by  theologians  as  a  system  so  without  parallel  in  other  re- 
ligions, and  in  Natural  Religion,  that  it  seems  a  kind  of  strange 
work  of  God,  an  eccentricity,  an  irruption  ;  whereas,  in  truth,  Chris- 
tianity is  an  orderly  factor,  and  an  organic  factor,  in  God's  vast 
framework  of  things,  and  all  it  needs  is  time  and  study,  to  show  its 
many  affiliations  with  all  the  great  Faiths  of  the  world.  That  is 
their  talk,  and  the  two  theologians  listen  to  it,  and  get  a  new  sense 
of  the  law-side  of  things,  and  they  begin  to  wonder — many  theolog- 
ians do  at  any  rate,  whether,  in  preaching  the  supernatural  and  the 
miraculous,  we  have  not  been  too  prone  to  show  the  irruptive  and 
abnormal  element  in  it,  rather  than  its  large  normalism.  A  miracle 
is  a  startling  and  unclassifiable  thing,  certainly,  on  its  hither  side  ; 
but  if  it  be  looked  at  on  its  transcendental  side  also,  may  it  not  be 


76  YALE -LECTURES. 

found  Uj  be  part  and  parcel  of  a  thoroughly-established,  universal, 
undeviating  orderliness  ;  so  that  while  a  miracle,  when  it  comes  into 
sight  on  the  earth-side,  is  very  sensational  in  its  rupture  of  the  cus- 
tomary flow  of  things,  it  is  even  more  imposing  as  a  law-abiding  unit 
in  that  totality  of  created  things  of  which  one  hemisphere  is  the 
natural,  and  the  other  the  supernatural.  When  the  supernatural 
plunges  into  the  natural  there  is  a  commotion  and  the  dust  flies,  and 
we  say  God  has  started  up  suddenly  to  do  by  direct  fiat,  what  would 
not  have  been  done  had  he  kept  his  repose,  and  permitted  his  crea- 
ted laws  to  move  on ;  but  he  has  not  started  up  probably ;  the 
scientists  are  right ;  his  laws  are  moving  on  and  it  was  they  that 
made  this  plunge,  and  this  dust. 

I  have  drawn  out  this  illustration  rather  fully,  because  it  does 
illustrate  my  idea  that  many  minds  working  independently  con- 
tribute to  the  unfolding  of  truth  in  all  its  phases.  My  joyful  con- 
viction is  that  the  perilous  rationalism  in  the  field  of  natural  science, 
which  is  one  of  the  most  obvious  and  most  striking  features  of  the 
intellectual  life  of  the  present  time,  will  do  forty  times  more  good 
than  hurt  in  the  expansion  and  enrichment  of  our  conception  of 
Christianity.  And  it  will  do  it  in  two  ways.  It  will  secure  a  just  at- 
tention to  aspects  of  truth  which  have  been  too  much  retired  ;  and 
it  will  cause  such  a  hard-headed,  and  scholarly  re-examination  of 
truths  which  have  not  been  retired,  but  have  been  held  prominent, 
and  made  to  be  the  Malakoff  and  Redan  of  the  Christian  position, 
that  they  will  be  reconfirmed  with  shoutings. 

Nature  is  as  truly  a  revelation  of  God  as  the  Bible  is.  Nature 
is  an  immense  theological  statement — and  every  attribute  of  God  is 
found  in  that  statement,  but  some  attributes  more  distinctly  than 
others.  Those  distinct  attributes  the  unbelieving  naturalists  are 
bringing  out — though  they  do  not  intend  it,  for  they  take  little  stock 
in  the  idea  of  a  personal  God — they  are  doing  good  theologiz- 
ing for  all  the  rest  of  us  : — and  if  our  theology  has  confined  itself 
too  much  to  a  Book  (as  I  suppose  it  has,)  the  labors  of  these  bright 
gentlemen  will  surely  supplement  our  deficiency. 

And  then  as  to  the  broader  establishment  of  old  truths  by  the 
laborious  gainsayings  of  these  men,  take  this  example  : — they  say 
that  Jesus  was  a  purely  natural  result ;  given  the  Jewish  race,  the 
Jewish  land,  the  Jewish  history,  Mar)'  the  Virgin,  Nazareth,  a  few 
simple  this-world  things  like  that,  and  the  great  Nazarene  is  fully 
accounted  for.     So  then  we  are  all  invited  to  study,  exhaustively, 


YALE  LECTURES.  77 

those  this-world  things ;  and  the  more  we  do  it,  the  more  it  stands 
out  as  never  before  that  Jesus  came  from  out  of  the  sky  in  the  main, 
and  could  not  have  been  born  of  Palestine  only. 

In  like  manner,  various  disparaging  assertions  touching  the 
origin  of  the  Bible,  and  touching  numbers  of  sacred  things,  have  led 
to  such  a  sifting  of  the  same  as  was  never  known  ;  and  continually 
the  result  is,  that  our  Religion,  in  all  its  substantials,  is  gloriously 
vindicating  itself. 

And  if  we  come  to  the  controversies  among  the  men  of  faith, 
as  to  the  inspiration  of  the  Bible,  and  the  Passion  of  the  Lord  Jesus, 
and  the  eternal  lot  of  sinners  and  all  the  rest ;  these  controversies 
have  sprung  up  because  our  men  are  intellectually  independent  and 
original — when  they  put  their  eyes  on  a  thing,  it  is  their  own  eyes 
that  they  put  on,  and  that  thing  therefore  is  seen  in  all  sorts  of  pos- 
sible ways,  and  some  impossible  ones ;  but  no  matter — what  Ed- 
wards does  not  see,  Wesley  will,  and  what  Wesley  does  not,  Edwards 
will.  Some  sensitive  man  does  not  cordialize  with  Calvin's  view  of 
God's  penalties.  That  is  his  personal  specialty ;  to  be  sensitive. 
Whether  it  was  that  his  mother  was  the  woman  she  was,  or  that  he 
happened  to  fall  under  special  forces  of  training,  I  do  not  know ; 
but  there  he  is  all  in  a  quiver  against  the  Calvinistic  theology  at  that 
point.  But  he  is  a  good  man,  and  a  man  of  mind  and  scholarship  ; 
he  begins  certain  hypothetical  reasonings  on  the  old  doctrine,  to 
see  if  he  cannot  get  it  into  some  sort  of  sufferable  shape  ;  and  per- 
haps not  tear  the  heart  out  of  it,  either.  Now,  what  I  say  is,  that 
that  man,  moving  freely  and  having  no  doubt  of  his  right  to  be  in- 
dependent, will  be  likely  to  hammer  out  some  statements  that  even 
Calvin  will  be  willing  to  hear.  In  his  horror  of  the  thought  that 
God  should  come  out  against  his  finally  impenitent  creatures,  in  ob- 
jective strokes  eternally  laid  on,  he  will  carefully  unfold  a  man's 
Hell  from  his  own  interior,  and  show  him  as  forever  in  the  grasp  of 
intellectual  laws  already  well  known.  And  what  other  ameliorations 
defensible  or  indefensible  he  will  surmise,  we  cannot  tell ;  but  it  is 
good  to  have  just  that  man — that  kind-hearted  (perhaps  over-kind 
hearted  and  over-shrinking,)  well-furnished,  determined  man,  tug- 
ging with  all  his  might  at  just  that  point.  Multiply  these  indefatiga- 
ble explorers  by  thousands,  and  you  see  what  is  seen  in  newly-dis- 
covered gold  lands ;  every  rod  of  the  theological  landscape  is  nu- 
merously searched,  and  every  ounce  of  its  dirt,  for  a  thousand  miles, 
is  microscopically  sifted  in  some  gold-searcher's  pan.     And  that  is 


78  YALE  LECTURES. 

what  we  want.  Our  theology  will  be  a  whole  orchestra,  when  all  its 
tones  are  discovered,  instead  of  a  squeak  here  and  a  squeak  there 
of  some  sectarian  view,  or  some  provincialism  or  some  passing 
aberration  of  the  century. 

I  have  spoken  in  praise  of  originality,  in  a  pretty  affirmative 
way,  you  have  noticed,  but  I  have  no  objection  to  slip  in  a  touch  of 
prudence  here  at  the  end. 

Egotism  and  vaporing,  and  a  despising  of  authorities  in  the  in- 
tellectual and  religious  world,  is  a  thing  easy  to  fall  into  when  your 
soul  gets  full  of  the  doctrine  of  originality  which  I  have  preached 
here  to-day  •  and  self-assertion,  and  an  opinionated  air,  and  a  brag- 
ging way  of  exhibiting  one's  originality,  is  not  beautiful  either  in 
young  men  or  in  old  ones — therefore  consider  a  moment. 

If  you  pursue  originality  for  its  own  sake,  or  because  it  feels  good 
to  be  original — or  if  you  pursue  it  for  the  sake  of  a  sensation,  among 
the  people,  and  because  that  feels  good ;  then  you  are  clean  out  of 
the  way,  and  your  originality  is  disgusting.  It  seems  to  me  I  should 
not  pursue  originality  at  all.  There  are  many  things  that  are  good 
to  have  but  you  must  not  pursue  them.  You  must  go  straight  along 
about  your  business,  and  let  them  come  of  themselves,  if  they  want 
to,  just  as  right-minded  maidens  get  their  lovers.  But  what  is  the 
business  that  you  are  to  go  straight  along  about,  and  in  which  origi- 
nality may  incidentally  come  to  you  ?  1  might  give  several  answers 
to  that.  If  you  are  in  passionate  pursuit  of  the  truth,  all  strutting  as 
of  originality  will  be  taken  out  of  you.  Or  if  you  have  a  passion  to 
do  good  to  the  congregation  to  whom  you  preach,  that  will  do  it. 
Can  I  think  of  my  sermon  in  a  conceited  way  when  my  whole  heart 
is  out  in  the  assembly  before  me  ?  As  well  could  the  runner  in  the 
games  think  of  his  gait,  or  the  swordsman  in  the  duel  delight  in  the 
glitter  of  his  sword.  My  Brethren,  God  puts  us,  his  ministers,  in  a 
very  testful  position.  On  the  one  hand,  we  must  make  sermons ; 
we  must  make  good  sermons,  we  must  ram  into  them  tons  of  stock, 
we  must  spend  days  on  each  one,  and  work  over  it  in  such  a  con- 
centrated and  devoted  way  that,  when  at  last  it  is  finished 
and  the  agony  is  over,  we  cannot  help  feeling  a  mother- 
like self-satisfaction  in  it ;  and  then  when  we  go  into  the 
pulpit,  we  must  deliver  it  decently,  and  give  enough  attention  to  our 
ownselves  to  secure  that  end ;  and  yet,  on  the  other  hand,  we  just 
as  much  must  keep  clear  of  self-consciousness,  and  a  loving  sense  of 
our  own  discourse,  if  we  are  tc  please  God  and  bless  the  people. 


YALE  LECTURES.  79 

There  we  are.  And  the  curse  of  the  preaching  of  many  of  us  is, 
that  we  have  not  the  strength  to  do  those  two  contrary  things,  and 
do  not  go  to  God  sufficiently  to  be  led  out  by  him  into  the  great 
motives  and  enthusiasm  in  which  self  is  swallowed  up  ;  the  enthusi- 
asm for  Truth,  and  the  enthusiasm  for  Humanity.  You  see  your 
peril,  Brethren,  and  you  see  your  remedy.  Sermon-making  is  in 
order  to  salvation.  Sermons  are  instruments,  not  ends.  "  A  good 
sermon  is  a  sermon  that  is  good  for  something,"  as  I  once  heard  an 
old  minister  remark. 

And  Originality  is  for  use.  You  want  to  be  original  because 
that  is  God's  method  for  the  intellect,  because  thus  you  are  a  dis- 
coverer of  truth,  because  thus  your  mind  is  made  prolific,  because 
thus  you  are  saved  from  plagiarism  whether  formal  or  virtual,  be- 
cause thus  you  do  your  part  towards  the  eventual  exhibition  of 
Christian  truth  in  its  many-sided  entirety ;  because  thus  you  are  a 
real  witness  for  God,  because  thus  you  continually  increase  your 
personal  mass  and  momentum  ;  and  because  all  these  particulars 
bear  on  the  glory  of  God,  and  the  welfare  of  man. 

Some  would  say,  it  is  well  enough  for  great  men  to  be  inde- 
pendent and  original  thinkers,  and  to  move  before  the  world  in  that 
gait — their  size  saves  them  from  being  ridiculous — a  sort  of  impe- 
rialism is  becoming  to  them,  and  people  put  up  with  it ;  but  for 
little  men  and  young  men  to  assume  to  be  original,  and  courage- 
ously do  their  own  thinking,  is  rather  intolerable.  It  can  be  made 
intolerable,  but  it  is  as  possible  for  a  small  mind  to  work  by  the 
method  of  originality  as  for  a  large  one,  else  I  should  not  be  deliv- 
ering this  lecture  ;  for  more  than  half  of  the  ministerial  minds  are 
smallish.  Moreover,  a  little  man  has  his  duty  to  his  own  mind,  and 
to  his  congregation,  as  much  as  anybody  has.  You  might  say  : — 
yonder  bit  of  a  man  has  no  moral  obligation  because  of  his  lack  of 
size  ;  but  he  has.  And  in  like  manner,  yonder  undergrown  intel- 
lect must  take  good  care  to  think  rightly — not  in  servile  dependence 
on  strong  men,  but  originally — and  if  he  does,  his  intellectual  forth- 
puttings,  while  they  will  not  be  stupendous  or  over-numerous,  will 
be  always  fresh  and  have  a  sound  of  authority. 

But  in  making  them  our  own  the  point  of  strain,  as  I  said,  is, 
to  keep  ourselves  perfectly  modest,  and  perfectly  receptive  of  the 
light  of  other  minds.  Absolutely  firm  on  the  one  hand,  and  abso- 
lutely genial  and  inoffensive  on  the  other.  Striving  to  be  firm,  we 
may  seem  conceited,  dogmatic,  and  repellant.    Striving  to  preserve 


80  YALE  LECTURES. 

our  intellectual  integrity,  and  the  courage  of  our  opinions,  in  the 
stress  of  the  world's  innumerable  yea  and  nay,  we  may  get  accused  of 
intellectual  pride  and  forwardness,  and  of  many  things ;  especially 
if  we  are  young. 

Well,  let  us  watch  and  pray,  and  do  the  best  we  can. 

I  look  back  with  amusement,  now,  to  the  intellectual  self-con- 
fidence with  which  I  left  this  Seminary  after  Dr.  Nathaniel  Taylor 
had  spent  a  couple  of  years  or  so  getting  me  on  to  my  own  legs  ; 
and  whereinsoever  I  stood  a  little  more  than  perpendicular,  I  take 
it  back  of  course,  but  I  bless  the  memory  of  that  very  affirmative, 
self-centred,  and  undoubting  old  man  notwithstanding.  He  knew 
in  whom  he  had  believed,  and  why  he  had  believed,  and  he  made 
us  all  feel  that  truth  is  discoverable,  and  that  we  could  discover  it, 
every  man  of  us,  and  that  we  did  not  need  to  be  badgered  out  of  it 
by  the  noise  of  gainsayers ;  and  that  a  man's  a  man,  in  theology  as 
in  some  other  things ;  and  that  it  is  better  to  go  to  the  judgment 
after  a  life-time  of  manful  strugglings  with  the  truth  albeit  with  some 
errors,  than  to  go  there  with  whatever  amount  of  truth  held  in  mere 
languid  receptivity.     And  he  was  right. 


IMAGINATION   IN   MINISTERS. 


I  am  here  to  day  to  make  a  plea  for  Imagination  in  Ministers 
considered  as  Theologians. 

I  do  not  know  whether  any  previous  lecturer  has  made  a  whole 
speech  on  that  faculty  or  not.  Some  of  the  lecturers  have  had 
the  faculty  themselves,  in  great  size,  but  perhaps  they  would  be 
afraid  to  encourage  people  generally  to  have  it.  I  heard  so  con- 
siderable and  judicious  a  man  as  the  late  Rev.  Dr.  Joel  Hawes, 
Pastor  for  a  life  time  of  the  First  Church  in  Hartford,  Connecticut, 
give  an  account  of  his  high-handed  proceedings,  in  the  days  of  his 
youth,  against  imagination  in  his  own  mind.  He  found,  he  said, 
that  he  was  pretty  strong  and  exuberant  in  that  trait,  and  that  his 
sermons  were  showing  it.  So  by  and  by,  when  traveling  alone  and 
thoughtful  in  his  carriage  all  the  way  from  Hartford  to  New  Haven, 
he  improved  the  occasion  for  a  solemn  deliberation  on  the  ques- 
tion : — "  how  can  I  do  the  most  good  in  my  life  time,  preaching 
imaginatively  as  now,  or  otherwise."  I  need  not  say  to  those  who 
knew  him,  which  way  that  debate  went,  nor  with  what  success  he 
enforced  on  himself  his  resolution  then  made,  to  extirpate  that 
perilous  endowment  of  his. 

Dr.  Hawes  stands  for  a  multitude.  They  are  afraid  of  imagi- 
nation. And  they  have  good  reasons  for  it.  I  am  afraid  of  it.  I 
am  afraid  of  every  power  of  the  mind.  I  am  afraid  of  mind — and 
body  too.  All  things  have  their  risks  and  perversions.  And  I  had 
thought  that  I  would  say  to  you  here,  to-day,  just  where  the  danger 
comes  in,  as  respects  imagination  in  the  preacher.  I  could  tell 
you  all  about  it ;  but  I  believe  that  the  dry  vision,  and  the  one- 
eyed  vision,  the  literalism  and  the  non-creative  habit  of  the  un- 


82  YALE  LECTURES. 

imaginative  men  has  cursed  theology  and  the  pulpit  even  more 
than  the  sky-flying  and  moonshine  of  the  imaginationists. 

But  I  cease  from  comparisons,  and  from  all  preliminaries,  and 
proceed  directly  to  illustrate  the  wholesome  function  of  this  great 
power  of  man  in  the  minister  considered  as  a  theologian — or  a  man 
theologizing.     And  under  that  head  I  notice  : 

First.  That,  the  imaginative  man — and  he  only — is  able  to 
handle,  and  draw  out,  biblical  doctrines  historically — to  take  it,  that 
is,  in  its  entire  historical  setting.  For  the  word  of  God  on  theology 
is  not  an  absolute  utterance  straight  down  from  the  skies,  and  direct 
from  his  lips,  but  it  comes  to  us  very  circuitously  through  human 
lips,  and  many  human  lips,  and  through  all  sorts  of  human  and 
earthly  intermediates ;  and  a  full-visioned  and  creative  grasp  of 
those  numerous  intermediates  is  an  essential  part  of  good  theologiz- 
ing. When  God  would  make  himself  known  in  his  fullness,  he 
chose  to  be  incarnated  in  the  person  of  his  eternal  Son ;  that  pre- 
existent  and  infinite  personage  took  upon  himself  the  conditions 
of  time  and  sense ;  he  dropped  into  an  order  of  things  historically 
prepared  for  him  by  a  long  and  laborious  process,  he  became  a 
vital  factor  in  that  order  of  things,  he  accepted  all  the  relations 
prepared  to  his  hand,  spoke  in  a  certain  language  for  example,  was 
of  a  certain  country,  dwelt  on  a  certain  spot,  in  a  certain  home,  was 
nursed  and  cultured  in  a  certain  religion, — and,  in  short,  made  his 
whole  manifestation  on  earth  a  relational  and  conditional  one,  so 
that  he  cannot  be  fully  understood  in  the  least  word  he  spoke,  or 
the  least  act  he  performed,  except  that  he  is  interpreted  by  those 
conditions,  or  relations  in  which  he  stood.  We  must  resurrect  his 
era ;  not  only  in  its  outlines,  but  in  all  its  essentials.  We  must  res- 
urrect Judea,  as  it  then  was.  And  when  we  get  hold  of  Judea  to  do 
that,  we  shall  find  that  Judea  intertangled  with  other  nationalities, 
so  that  we  have  undertaken,  in  fact,  a  kind  of  general  resurrection. 
And  if  Judea  intertwined  with  contemporary  peoples,  so  it  did,  O  ! 
how  wonderfully,  with  the  peopled  and  providential  past ;  so  that 
to  possess  ourselves  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth,  as  he  actually  and  totally 
was,  a  time-man  and  historical  phenomenon,  we  need  the  magnifi- 
cent clear  vision  and  creativeness  of  the  imaginative  faculty,  as 
these  modern  times  (to  their  praise  be  it  said)  are  finding  out. 

Historical  imagination  !  an  indispensable  first  thing  in  the 
theologian. 

But  some  one  in  his  heart  may  say  to  me  here  : — "  Cannot  any 


YALE  LECTURES.  83 

man  of  good  sense  and  decent  memory,  without  a  grain  of  imagi- 
nation, by  diligent  study  of  any  past — as  the  past,  for  instance,  in 
which  Jesus  organically  stood — re-construct  that  past,  and  have  it 
live  before  him  in  its  full-toned  actuality,  so  that  any  one  of  the 
many  forces  and  personages  of  which  it  is  made  up  shall  be  judged 
by  him  in  a  valid  way.  Is  it  not  claiming  too  much  for  the  imagi- 
nation to  say  that  it  only  is  able  to  draw  out  the  theology  of  the 
Scripture,  and  the  theology  of  the  Christian  ages,  in  a  strictly  his- 
torical spirit  and  method  !  " 

In  answering  this  question,  I  must  make  a  little  analysis  of  that 
mental  power  which  we  call  imagination.  I  will  not  undertake  a 
complete  definition,  but  I  will  point  out  some  of  the  marks  by 
which  it  may  be  known.  For  all  the  purposes  of  this  present  dis- 
course, imagination  may  be  divided  into  imagination  recollective, 
and  imagination  creative.  Imagination  recollective,  places  before 
the  mind  things  absent  or  past  which  we  have  personally  seen,  or 
which  have  been  brought  to  our  knowledge  by  hearsay  and  study. 
Imagination  creative,  takes  those  re-produced  absent  or  past  things, 
and  out  of  their  many  elements  makes  new  combinations  ;  as  when 
a  painter  puts  into  his  landscape  not  any  one  natural  scene,  but 
particulars  and  parts  of  many  scenes  with  which  he  is  familiar. 
As  regards  the  historical  construction  of  theology,  whereof  I  have 
been  speaking,  imagination  recollective  figures  there ;  that  to 
begin  with ;  and  if  I  am  asked, — how  does  imagination  recollective 
differ  from  memory,  and  does  it  differ  at  all, — I  reply,  only  in  this, 
that  it  presents  to  the  mind  things  absent  or  foregone  in  a  vivid  way, 
and  after  the  manner  of  literal  vision.  Things  merely  recollected 
seem  distant  and  cold,  and  to  that  extent  void  of  result ;  things  imagi- 
natively recollected  seem  near,  warm,  vital,  and  inspiring.  A 
recollective  theologian,  by  virtue  of  an  enormous  gift  of  memory, 
may  have  an  encyclopedic  hold  on  the  theologic  past,  but  he  holds 
the  past  as  Encyclopedias  are  apt  to,  in  a  colorless  way,  and  with 
no  special  human  interest.  The  imaginative  theologian  moves 
among  those  by-gones,  all  and  utterly  alive,  and  visional, — as  much 
so  as  though  he  had  been  personally  among  them,  and  of  them, 
originally.  He  cannot  see  that  a  man,  or  a  deed,  or  a  nation,  or  a 
social  process,  or  a  system  of  thought  two  thousand  years  away,  is 
any  less  actual  or  thrilling  than  the  same  thing  in  these  days. 
When  some  one  disparaged  Plato  in  the  presence  of  Dr.  Arnold, 
Arnold's  lip  quivered  with  grief.     A  memoriter  man  could  not  have 


84  YALE  LECTURES. 

been  moistened  in  that  way,  by  whatever  outrage  against  all  con- 
ceivable Platos.  He  would  be  abundantly  acquainted  with  them, 
the  Platos,  of  course,  but  as  frigid  historical  entities,  and  not  in 
any  flesh  and  blood  warmth  and  nearness. 

A  few  years  ago,  accidentally,  it  was  found  that  underneath  old 
St.  Clements  in  Rome — itself  one  of  the  most  antique  of  churches — 
was  another  St.  Clements,  which  had  been  buried  and  unknown  for 
over  a  thousand  years.  When  I  was  there,  the  portico  and  nave  of 
that  edifice  had  been  dug  out,  and  Father  Mullooly,  of  the  Domin- 
ican Monastery  near  by,  conducted  a  party  of  us  through  it,  with 
explanations.  As  we  passed  in  he  called  our  attention  to  the  mar- 
ble threshold,  half-worn  out  by  the  passage  of  countless  feet  in  the 
long-gone  times,  and  said  : — "  there  are  a  good  many  foot-prints 
on  that  stone  ;  " — and  to  me,  instantly,  those  living  generations  were 
there  again,  and  I  felt  the  mysterious  pathos  of  human  life  in  their 
persons  as  deeply  and  emotionally  as  I  could  in  any  human  com- 
pany of  to-day.  That  sentence  of  Mullooly's  was  coined  in  the 
imagination — distinctly.  It  was  not  memory.  It  was  not  his 
intellect  grasping  a  fact.  It  was  feeling  warmed  up  to  vision.  It 
was  imagination,  one  of  whose  distinctions  is  that  it  is  always  suffused 
with  sensibility  : — it  was  imagination  revivifying  triumphantly  those 
dead  and  shadowy  great  multitudes  by  a  single  unconscious  master- 
stroke— such  as  are  easy  to  that  imperial  faculty. 

And  Father  Mullooly  by  this  little  touch,  classed  himself  right 
in  with  Shakespeare,  in  many  a  passage  of  his  plays.  It  required 
precisely  the  same  mental  qualities  to  re-people  that  old  Nave,  and 
tie  a  thousand  human  years  to  that  foot-worn  marble,  that  it  did  to 
make  Hamlet  reclothe  the  bare,  dead  skull  of  Yorick  which  the 
grave-digger  had  thrown  out,  and  which  Hamlet  held  in  his  hands, 
saying  :  "Alas  poor  Yorick  !  I  knew  him,  Horatio,  a  fellow  of  infi- 
nite jest,  of  most  excellent  fancy ;  he  hath  borne  me  on  his  back  a 
thousand  times.  *  *  Here  hung  those  lips  that  I  have  kissed,  I 
know  not  how  oft.  Where  be  your  gibes  now  ? — your  gambols  ? 
your  songs  ?  your  flashes  of  merriment  that  were  wont  to  set  the 
table  on  a  roar."  Is  Hamlet  remembering  there?  Anybody  could 
do  that.  Perhaps  Yorick's  dog  could.  But  the  dog  could  not  thus 
re-enflesh  that  skull ;  re-create  those  living  lips,  and  make  them 
merry  again ;  and  give  poor  Yorick  a  live  and  actual  visit  to  the 
earth  once  more. 

That  was  imagination  ;  in  one  of  her  minute  works  to  be  sure  ; 


YALE  LECTURES.  85 

only  manipulating  a  skull ;  but  herself  entirely,  nevertheless — her 
intuitive  and  total  vision,  her  deep  feeling,  her  weird  mastery  of 
materials.  It  required  only  a  glimpse  of  her  stately  gait  to  reveal 
Juno,  only  his  perfect  O  to  reveal  Giotto,  only  the  one  tone  "  Mary," 
to  reveal  to  the  Magdalen  the  risen  Jesus ;  and  in  like  manner,  one 
slightest  word  may  suddenly  disclose  a  royal  imagination  in  its 
entire  characteristic  power. 

But,  to  get  back  to  theology  once  more,  I  want  to  say — what  I 
have  already  slipped  along  into — that  when  imagination  recollective 
has  done  her  whole  work  in  any  given  case — as  in  the  reproduction 
of  Jesus  of  Nazareth,  or  of  the  Christian  theology — and  has  put  the 
past  before  the  mind  with  great  clearness,  it  has  in  fact  passed  on 
into  imagination  creative.  We  may  have  a  clear  knowledge  of  the 
constituent  elements  of  an  era ;  those  elements  may  stand  before 
us  in  the  most  vivid  and  visional  reality  ;  but  if  we  stop  there,  we 
are  not  in  full  possession  of  that  era.  We  are  right  where  the 
painter  is  when  he  has  assembled  the  several  views,  and  snatches  of 
color  and  rude  studies,  out  of  which  he  will  make  his  landscape. 
I  spoke  of  imagination  creative  as  that  by  which  we  combine  things 
recollected  in  such  shapes  as  they  never  had  before  ;  and  that  was 
a  true  description.  But  I  must  say  now,  it  is  likewise  a  creative 
act,  to  take  the  contents  of  an  historical  era  for  example,  the  hun- 
dred details  which  you  have  gathered  in  their  separate  literality, 
and  organize  them  into  a  conception  of  that  past  as  it  stood  when 
on  the  stage  here,  an  organized  and  living  unity.  Am  I  making 
myself  as  clear  at  this  point  as  I  would  like  ?  It  were  possible  to 
assemble  the  elemental  contents  of  a  rose.  There  they  are  as  plain 
as  day.  But  you  are  not  within  a  hundred  thousand  miles  of  a  rose. 
Can  you  organize  your  elements?  Can  you  get  them  together  and 
make  them  grow  and  flush,  and  be  fragrant,  and  be,  in  fact,  a  rose? 
No — only  a  Creator  can  do  that. 

Well,  call  the  era  of  our  Lord  a  rose.  I,  a  memoriter  historian, 
have  heaped  together  for  myself  that  miscellany  of  information 
touching  that  era,  which  is  the  era,  in  its  atomic  form.  And  there 
I  am.  I  have  imagination  enough  to  look  at  those  accumulated 
atoms  in  a  pretty  living  and  warm  way.  They  are  invisible,  but  I 
see  them.  They  are  long-past  things  but  I  get  them  near.  And  I 
brood  them  with  quite  a  fructification  of  interest.  But  I  have  not 
my  era  yet.  This  sand-heap  of  atoms  of  mine  is  not  that  era  as  it 
was  to   the  people   who  took  part  therein.     They  did  not  dwell 


86  YALE  LECTURES. 

much  on  atomics  when  they  were  laughing  and  crying,  loving  and 
hating,  and  tugging  in  the  thousand-fold  thrill  of  their  living-time. 
What  I  want  is,  that  time  with  its  thrills,  flushes  and  throbs,  a  cor- 
porate unit  of  life  ;  and  to  get  that  I  must  be  a  Creator.  I  must 
have  creative  imagination.  That  final  act  of  the  mind  by  which 
the  era — that  inert  Adam — is  made  a  living  soul,  is  beyond  all  analy- 
sis, I  presume ;  as  much  so  as  God's  act  when  he  made  the  first 
man.  And  I  do  not  know  whether  any  serviceable  rules  can  be 
given  for  the  creation  of  that  creative  faculty.  I  should  not  wonder 
if  a  man  must  be  born  to  it.  But  if  it  so  happens  that  he  is  born 
to  it,  then  he  can  cultivate  it,  or  kill  it  (as  Dr.  Hawes  killed  his) . 
My  notion  is  that  he  had  better  cultivate  it — and  I  am  using  this 
lecture  to  show  the  splendid  uses  of  the  faculty,  in  order  that  I  may 
make  you  feel  that  you  had  all  better  cultivate  whatso  of  it  you 
may  have.  It  is  a  high-blood  steed  with  a  fearful  amount  of  vigor 
and  possible  rampancy,  but  so  much  the  better  if  only  you  once  get 
it  harnessed  and  at  work.  A  horse  might  be  so  lumbering  and 
sleepy  as  not  to  be  worth  harnessing.  In  theology  we  do  not  want 
any  such  faculties  as  that. 

But  dwell  a  moment  longer  on  imagination  creative.  Perhaps 
there  lingers  in  your  mind  a  doubt  whether  the  living  reconstruc- 
tion of  an  era  after  the  manner  just  described  is  a  creative  act — is 
it  not  rather  a  purely  formulative  act.  Well,  you  would  not  call  it 
a  formulative  act  merely  if  a  painter  worked  up  a  dozen  different 
scenes  into  one  original  scene.  That  would  certainly  be  creative. 
He  has  made  something  never  before  seen,  or  thought  of. 
But  I  cannot  see  that  his  work  is  any  more  truly  creative 
than  is  the  painter's  who  throws  upon  his  canvas  any  one 
view  in  nature  provided  he  gives  the  view  in  its  entire  and  pro- 
found significance.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  greatest  landscapes 
the  genius  of  man  ever  produced,  are,  as  a  rule,  copies  of  single 
actual  scenes — their  greatness  consisting  in  this  :  that  they  have 
made  those  scenes  the  medium  of  all  expression,  whether  moral, 
spiritual,  or  esthetic,  that  can  be  thrown  into  them.  And  when  I 
read  the  great  Poets  of  Nature  I  find  the  same  thing.  By  their 
profound  and  phenomenal  sensibility  they  perceive  nature's  utmost 
possible  meaning,  and  tell  it.  That  is  all,  generally.  Coleridge 
looks  up  to  Mt.  Blanc,  with  a  vision  most  open-eyed  and  sympa- 
thetic, and  veraciously  relates  what  he  sees.  Of  course,  the  poem 
is  an  eminently  subjective  one,  because  in  it  he  has  imputed  to  the 


YALE  LECTURES.  87 

mountain  many  feelings  of  his  own ;  but  the  mountain  is  capable 
of  having  those  feelings  put  into  it ;  in  other  words,  the  mountain 
in  its  various  aspects,  movements,  and  manifestations,  is  a  natural 
vehicle  of  expression  for  those  human  feelings,  and  may  be  said  to 
have  been  created  unto  that  end ;  and  poetry  reaches  its  highest 
expression  when  the  spirit  of  man  and  the  spirit  of  the  universe 
thus  completely  flow  together.  When  Coleridge,  Wordsworth,  or 
whoever,  reaches  that  synthesis  of  those  two,  and  that  final  ecstasy, 
the  creative  imagination  has  done  a  work  than  which  there  is  none 
greater ; — and  yet  the  work  is  simply  interpretative  ; — it  is  not  the 
making  of  something  out  of  nothing,  neither  is  it  the  combining  of 
forty  familiar  somethings  into  a  brand-new  result. 

So  I  like  to  insist  that  when  the  imagination  of  man  is  engaged 
in  the  work  of  historical  reconstruction,  making  the  dead  past  live 
again,  and  departed  personages  revisit  the  earth,  and  exhumed 
skulls  put  on  the  red  and  rose  of  life,  she  is  operating  in  her  su- 
preme, creative,  function,  and  is  wonderful  beyond  all  words.  The 
annalist  does  not  know  much  about  this.  The  mechanical  historian 
does  not.  Many  a  theologian  does  not.  Some  teachers  of  theology 
do  not.  Some  teachers  of  church  history  do  not.  History  is  in- 
tensely vital ;  and  moves  on  by  a  vital  advance,  and  addresses  itself 
to  the  imagination  as  much  as  it  does  to  the  reason — and  in  fact  the 
reason  is  not  able  ever  to  be  thoroughly  reasonable  until  she  has 
taken  into  herself  the  warmth,  vivacity,  and  sudden-flashing  intui- 
tiveness  of  that  other  great  faculty.  It  has  been  thought  that  in  the 
cold  fields  of  science  only  reason  and  the  remorseless  exactitudes 
of  logic  have  place  ;  but,  the  truth  is,  poetry  is  not  more  indebted 
to  imagination  than  science  is.  The  brilliant  guesses  of  the  sons  of 
science,  which,  used  first  as  working  hypotheses,  have  at  last  gone 
in  among  the  eternal  substructures  of  knowledge,  were  the  unreas- 
oning outsprings  of  the  imagination,  and  proved  themselves  more 
than  guesses  because  of  the  large  and  luminous  sanity  which  is 
native  to  that  faculty,  and  because  of  its  constitutional  hunger  for 
the  real  and  the  true.  And  as  to  exactitudes,  while  the  reason  has 
hers,  the  imagination  has  hers — the  only  difference  between  them 
being  this,  that  the  exactitudes  of  the  reason  are  formal,  while  the 
exactitudes  of  the  imagination  reach  back  to  the  spirit  of  things, 
and  are  the  more  profoundly  exact  on  that  very  account.  This 
point,  however,  will  get  some  illustration  when  I  come  to  the  third 
head  of  this  address. 


88  YALE  LECTURES. 

My  second  head  runs  thus  : 

The  man  of  imagination,  and  he  alone,  inclines  to  see  doctrines 
in  their  comparative  importance.  It  is  in  this  as  in  picture-making. 
In  order  to  picturesque  effects,  a  painter  must  have  an  eye  to  light 
and  shade,  and  proportion,  and  perspective,  and  the  manifold  rela- 
tivities. The  cow  in  his  landscape  must  have  her  place,  and  the 
castle  must  have  its  place,  and  the  strong  wind  in  the  trees  must 
have  its  place,  and  the  over-flying  scurry  of  clouds,  and  the  human 
persons,  and  the  river  winding  out  into  the  dim  and  unsearchable 
distance,  must  all  have  their  thoroughly  discriminated  position  and 
value,  otherwise  we  are  treated,  not  to  a  picture  but  to  an  outspread 
of  exaggeration,  confusion  and  nonsense.  Some  men  paint  in  that 
way  considerably.  A  Chinese  man  might,  I  fancy.  His  landscape 
is  just  a  flat  surface  of  unassorted  magnitudes.  It  has  no  maxima 
and  minima,  but  an  insufferable  array  and  pressure  of  maxima.  So 
in  theology.  It  is  possible  to  have  such  a  solemn  sense  of  the 
value  of  doctrines  as  to  make  them  all  infinite,  and  defend  them  all 
therefore  with  the  same  earnestness  ;  and  insist  that  they  shall  all  go 
into  the  creeds,  and  all  be  presented  in  the  pulpit,  in  the  very  fore- 
ground of  discourse ;  that  there  shall  not  be  any  background  in 
theology,  in  fact — for  what  do  we  want  of  a  background,  when  we 
have  nothing  to  put  into  it,  no  doctrines,  that  is,  that  deserve  to  be 
subordinated  by  being  located  in  that  partial  retirement. 

Now,  my  Brethren,  all  this  flat-surface  work  comes  of  unimag- 
inative minds.  I  knew  an  able  preacher  once  who  was  unto  his 
people,  pretty  soon,  wherever  he  went,  exactly  as  though  he  were 
not  able,  because  his  entire  presentation  of  himself  and  his  topic 
was  a  piece  of  flat-surface  work.  His  solemn  voice  had  no  light 
and  shade  in  it.  It  was  just  solemn.  Neither  had  his  delivery 
light  and  shade.  It  was  one  prolonged  and  unvarying  earnestness. 
His  diction  had  no  light  and  shade  in  it.  It  was  all  first-class. 
The  first  sentence  was  as  good  as  the  next  one,  and  the  next,  and 
the  next,  clear  through  ;  the  last  being  an  unexceptionable  duplicate 
of  all  that  went  before.  If  that  Homer  could  only  have  nodded 
sometimes  !  But  he  didn't.  If  he  could  have  slackened  his 
seriousness,  or  his  diction,  or  his  holy  voice,  or  his  determination  to 
do  good — if  some  gentle  cloud  of  humor  could  have  precipitated 
its  dewiness  upon  his  discourse  at  points;  if  some  infirmity  of 
colloquialism  could  have  overtaken  him ;  if  the  grand  sum-total  of 
his  emphasis  could  have  been  distributed  less  evenly ;  sometimes  in 


YALE  LECTURES.  89 

cumulations  and  sometimes  in  hollows,  just  as  the  seas,  abhoring 
flatness  and  endless  levels,  climb  up  in  great  tides  and  storm-lifts, 
and  then  sink  back  and  consent  to  be  tame  a  little,  while  they  get 
breath  for  another  run — why  !  he  would  have  been  far  and  away  more 
effective.  Imagination  is  limber,  and  variable,  because  it  sees  all 
things  relatively,  according  to  the  laws  of  the  picturesque  ;  it  delights 
in  cows,  castles,  clouds,  winding  rivers  and  human  beings ;  and  in 
universal  geniality  it  is  willing  to  have  them  all  powerfully  painted ; 
but  it  knows  the  difference  between  a  cow  and  a  man,  and  proposes 
to  have  them  painted  accordingly — and  when  imagination  goes  into 
theology,  she  knows  the  difference  between  those  doctrines  that  are 
of  the  essence  of  Christianity  and  salvation,  and  those  that  are  not ; 
and  between  the  spirit  of  a  doctrine  and  the  form.  But  this  will 
come  out  more  evidently  under  the  next  division  of  my  subject. 

My  third  head,  then,  is  that  imagination  is  necessary  in  order  to 
the  interpretation  of  the  imaginative  parts  of  the  Bible,  and  a  clear 
hold  on  the  realities  that  lie  back  of  its  oftimes  highly  poetic  vocab- 
ulary. 

To  illustrate.  How  often  in  that  Book  is  God  spoken  of  as 
angry  and  raging,  as  revengeful,  as  impatient,  as  punctilious  and 
easily  affronted,  as  blood-thirsty,  as  treasuring  up  a  personal  insult  for 
many  generations,  and  as  being  many  things  a  man  certainly  never 
ought  to  be.  And  the  prose  man — the  unmitigated  prose  man — 
thinks  there  must  be  some  element  of  literality  in  this, — that  God 
has  in  his  mind,  something  like  those  several  inclemencies.  But 
the  poetic  theologian  knows  that  these  mighty  adjectives  are  but  the 
tumultuation  of  the  imagination,  piling  up  her  sensational  images — 
to  express  something  to  be  sure  ;  something,  but,  of  a  truth,  not 
this — that  God  actually  has  in  his  feeling  the  literal  counterparts  of 
those  awful  human  terms.  God  is  infinitely  genial.  God  is  uni- 
formly and  eternally  genial.  God  never  had  a  first  flutter  of  impa- 
tience. God  never  stands  on  his  dignity  and  resents  insults.  God 
never  in  one  instance  laid  an  affront  away  in  his  memory  and 
watched  for  an  opportunity  to  get  in  a  killing  return-stroke.  And 
how  could  his  creatures  survive  another  minute  if  he  were  such  a 
terrific  being  as  that.  But,  in  the  way  God  enforces  law  throughout 
his  dominions,  we  have  a  state  of  things  as  though  all  those  adjec- 
tives about  him  were  true  words.  When  we  transgress  law  we  smart 
for  it,  and  it  hurts  us  and  frightens  us,  as  though  back  of  the  law 
were  some  great  personal  anger.  When  the  misdoings  of  some 
7 


90  YALE  LECTURES. 

ancestor  of  mine  report  themselves  in  my  diseased  body,  it  is  as 
though  God  had  remembered  those  misdoings  of  his  back  there, 
and  now  had  a  chance  to  gratify  his  revenge.     When  I  resist  the 
Holy  Spirit,  and  therefore  quite  lose  that  Spirit,   it  is  as  though 
God  would  not  endure  an  insult,  had  lost  his  patience,  had  grown 
sullen  towards  me,  and  had  left  me — perhaps  forever.     The  hither- 
side  of  these  realities  is  such  as  to  justify  those  lively  and  fierce 
adjectives  concerning  God  which  I  have  quoted  from  the  Scriptures  ; 
and  those  adjectives  become  infelicitous  and  intolerable  only  when 
innocent  literalists  get  hold  of  them,  and  forgetting  the  essentially 
figurative  character  of  all  language  when  applied  to  supersensible 
objects,  proceed  to  practically  demonize  the  Divine  Being  by  think- 
ing  of  him  as  actually  living  up  to   the   whole   import   of  those 
discreditable  descriptives.     And  it  seems  particularly  curious  that 
they   should  thus  literalize  those  descriptives,  because  the  Bible  has 
thrown  in  a  whole  other  class  of  descriptives  which  talk  in  a  way 
precisely  opposite  to  those  first  ones,  and  seem  to  be  striving  with  all 
their  might  to  save  God's  honor  from  the  aforesaid  imputations  of 
literalism.     The  reason  of  man  is  a  poor  broken  thing  but  there  is 
enough  left  of  it  to  see  that  when  the  Scriptures  set  forth  God  as 
infinitely  amiable,  and  also  set  him  forth  as  a  being  of  rage,  resent- 
ment, touchiness,  implacability,  and  the  like,  both  of  those  pictures 
cannot  be  literally  true.     So  the  honest,  and  sturdy  old  Bible,  fairly 
forces  us  into  figurative  renderings,  if  only  we  have  enough  of  im- 
agination, with  its  elasticity,  to  be  forced.     Back  of  these  strong, 
antithetic  terms  in  regard  to  God,  there  is  some  sort  of  nature  in 
him  which  they  are  both  trying  to  describe,  and  in  which  they  are 
both  harmonized.     Some  fumbling,  in  so  great  a  matter,  is  pardon- 
able— inevitable  at  any  rate,  considering  what  lame  faculties  men 
have — but  it  is  not  pardonable  to  select  those  eminently  anthropo- 
morphic images,  hate,  vengeance  and  the  rest,  and  declare  them  literal 
and  no  images ;  and  then  fall  upon  the  blander  and  sweeter  words, 
love,  patience,  tenderness,  mercy,  long-sufferance  and  forgiveness, 
and  condemn  them  to  be  images,  with  no  great  and  comfortable 
reality  behind  them.     Only  just  let  us  have  imagination  in  this  bus- 
iness, and  we  are  all  right.     We  can  find  our  way  to  a  fatherly  and 
dear  God,  who,  like  all  fathers,  does  many  a  thing  that  hurts,  be- 
cause his  heart  is  so  unfathomably  tender  that  he  cannot  do  otherwise. 
Well,  the  non-imaginative  theology,  after  it  has  got  its  Deity  of 
wrath,  and  other  traits  germane  to  wrath,  proceeds  to  find  in  the 


YALE  LECTURES.  91 

Bible  a  correlative  doctrine  of  atonement,  and  the  gist  of  the  me- 
diation of  Jesus  is  made  to  be  its  placation  of  just  that  Being. 
None  of  us  want  to  deny  a  propitiary  element  in  the  work  of 
Christ ;  the  manifold  language  of  propitiation  found  in  Holy  Writ 
is  good  and  precious  language  ;  it  is  not  language  misused,  any 
more  than  all  those  wrath-terms  are,  on  which  we  have  dwelt ;  it  is 
language  designed  to  point  us  to  some  sort  of  reality  in  the  nature, 
and  in  the  administration  of  God.  What  that  reality  is,  I  might 
undertake  to  say  if  there  were  time  for  it,  but  this  I  am  determined 
to  say  (and  would  if  it  took  me  a  month)  :  namely,  that  the  pas- 
sion of  the  Lord  was  not  exacted  in  any  spirit  of  hate,  or  blood- 
thirstiness,  or  inappeasable  hunger  for  penalty,  or  irritability  as  of 
offended  dignity ;  and  if  that  passion  of  the  Redeemer  had  a  look 
as  though  it  were  thus  demanded,  or  if  any  language  of  the  Bible 
has  that  look,  it  is  because  the  passion  and  the  language  alike,  are 
images,  or  terms  of  imagination ;  and  what  the  eternal  facts  are 
to  which  they  would  direct  our  attention,  we  must  discover  by 
accumulating  all  heaven-given  terms,  types,  and  acted  tragedies, 
and  sifting  them  down  to  that  ultimate  and  sufficiently  awful  real 
thing  in  God,  wherein  they  all  terminate  and  agree.  A  piece  of 
work  in  which  imagination  has  a  principal  part. 

But,  if  a  Deity  of  rages  and  terrors,  implies,  and  leads  on  to, 
an  inadmissible  doctrine  of  atonement,  so  also  does  it  lead  on  to 
an  inadmissible  doctrine  of  decrees — election  and  reprobation — 
and  an  inadmissible  doctrine  of  Hell,  and  to  a  whole  system  of  in- 
admissibles ;  which  inadmissibles  I  do  not  mention  as  wishing  to 
combat  them.  I  care  nothing  for  that  to-day,  except  as  in  illustra- 
tion of  what  theology  may  come  to  when  it  is  wrought  out  without  the 
limberness,  largeness,  insight,  geniality  and  intuitive  vigor  of  the 
imagination.  Hell  is  bad  enough  in  its  reality,  without  its  being 
gloomed  additionally  by  the  over-hanging  presence  and  the  glee  of 
a  Deity  such  as  has  been  secured  by  the  petrification  of  the  live 
images  in  such  words  as  anger,  and  the  rest.  What  men  suffer  in 
hell,  here  and  hereafter,  is  so  hard  to  bear,  and  is  so  full  of  terror, 
that,  taken  in  its  simple  first-aspect,  it  makes  one  think  of  a  terribly 
offended,  and  terribly  strong-willed,  law-giver ;  and  this  natural 
first-thought  is  worked  up  in  the  Scriptural  imageries  of  Hell. 
Then  again  as  to  decrees — it  is  a  fact  that  a  certain  part  of  the 
human  race  are  saved,  and  a  certain  part  are  not.  There  stands 
that  fact,  overshadowing  all  life ;  mysterious  and  sorrowful  to  the 


92  YALE  LECTURES. 

last  degree.  The  universe  of  God,  man  included,  is  so  constituted, 
and  the  government  of  God  is  so  administered,  that  that  stupen- 
dous and  pitiful  result  is  incessantly  coming  out, — I  was  going  to 
say,  is  incessantly  secured,  as  though  there  might  be  some  intention 
in  it,  and  a  theology  has  been  found  that  has  the  courage  to  say 
there  is  intention  in  it.  Well,  the  whole  thing  is  so  terrific,  and 
works  on  so  as  with  the  sureness  of  fate  and  purpose,  that  the 
Bible  writers,  who  always  freely  use  the  language  of  appearance, 
have  spoken  of  God  as  electing  some  and  cutting  off  others  in  an 
exceedingly  willful  and  irresistible  sovereignty  ;  at  least,  plenty  of 
the  expressions  used  by  them  are  such  as  have  led  many  to  say  : — 
God  is  that  kind  of  a  being,  and  does  such  things.  And  this  notion 
of  his  fateful  sovereignty  in  the  moral  field,  is  able  to  get  a  good 
show  of  support  from  his  indivertible,  awful,  straightforwardness  in 
the  field  of  natural  law.  Imagination  says  :  As  Jesus  sobbed  over 
doomed  Jerusalem,  so  it  must  be  God  tenderly  reluctates  from  all 
hard  dooms  in  the  creation  ;  and  these  ten  thousand  shows  of  hard- 
ness in  him,  and  these  Scriptural  words  of  hardness,  do  not  mean 
hardness,  except  as  love  itself  is  compelled  to  be  very  firm  some- 
times in  order  to  be  really  love,  and  compass  its  loving  ends,  and 
make  all  worlds  glad. 

I  do  not  forget  that  imagination,  in  her  free  way  of  interpreta- 
tion may  smooth  down  some  fearful  facts  too  much,  sometimes ; 
taking  the  love-words  of  the  Bible  too  literally  and  unqualifiedly, 
and  subjecting  the  words  of  wrath,  fear  and  doom  to  an  unjustifiable 
disembowelment ;  as  though,  being  images  evidently,  and  disa- 
greeable ones,  too,  they  had  no  rights,  as  message-bearers  to  men. 
That  has  often  been  done  ;  I  confess  it.  But  what  I  aim  to  bring 
out  is,  that  the  whole  vocabulary  of  divine  revelation,  as  regards 
things  spiritual  and  transcendental,  is  imaginative,  and  must  be 
imaginatively  received.  Without  imagination,  theology  is  always 
wrong — with  imagination,  theology  may  be  right,  (approximately), 
and  often  is.  When  your  terms  of  revelation  are  images,  and  when 
as  being  images  they  are  gloriously  contrary  one  to  the  other,  on 
the  face  of  them,  (as  it  is  their  right  to  be,  it  being  of  the  genius 
and  essence  of  language  that  they  should  be,  and  as  they  must  be 
if  they  would  communicate  the  facts  of  God  in  their  largeness), 
then  it  is  only  the  image-making  faculty  in  man  that  can  take  those 
terms,  and  get  back  to  their  ground  of  unity  in  the  supersensible 
fact  or  facts  which  they  are  all  striving  to  set  forth  ;  just  as  in  a  law- 


YALE  LECTURES.  93 

case,  when  a  hundred  witnesses  testify,  each  speaking  from  his  own 
standpoint,  it  needs  a  mind  of  some  flexibility,  and  some  experience 
of  contraries,  to  find  the  undoubted  kernel  of  things  under  that 
mass  of  information  and  misinformation. 

My  Brethren.  I  have  not  half  unfolded  the  use  of  the  imagina- 
tion in  Biblical  interpretation. 

You  are  reading  your  Scriptural  Lesson  in  your  pulpit ;  no 
matter  what  it  is,  but  I  will  suppose  it  is  Jesus  at  Jacob's  well  con- 
versing with  the  Samaritan  woman.  Take  that,  out  of  scores. 
Well,  read  it  with  your  imagination.  You  see  the  scene  : — see  it,  I 
say,  as  though  you  were  there.  The  spot,  the  surrounding  land- 
scape, the  appearance  of  the  well,  the  face,  form  and  attitude  of 
Jesus,  and  of  the  woman,  the  tone  of  Jesus  when  he  speaks,  calm, 
kind,  communicative  and  deep ;  the  voice  of  the  woman  replying, 
her  changing  face  as  the  Master  leads  her  on,  her  curiosity,  her 
wonder,  her  rising  earnestness,  her  longing,  her  vague  grasp  of  his 
spiritual  profundities — the  whole  picture,  considered  as  a  picture, — 
you  using  all  you  ever  learned  of  the  topography  of  that  region, 
and  all  you  ever  learned  about  Samaritans,  and  all  your  study  of 
Jesus,  using  all  to  make  that  picture  complete,  and  vivid  to  your 
mind  ;  read  the  lesson  thus,  and  it  will  not  be  historical  but  present, 
not  abstract  teaching  but  the  teaching  of  life,  not  Jesus  remembered 
and  read  about,  but  Jesus.  O  !  it  is  wonderful,  how  real,  and  interest- 
ing, such  passages  are  sometimes.  I  have  often  been  so  filled  by 
them  that  I  could  hardly  read  at  all.  My  conviction  of  the  divinity 
of  the  Scriptures  has  been  gained  by  these  realistic  touches,  these 
imaginative  reproductions  of  scenes  and  conversations  in  Jesus'  life, 
more,  I  think,  than  in  any  other  way.  I  shall  never  be  able  to  de- 
scribe the  impression  I  have  sometimes  received  of  the  depth, 
tenderness,  and  grandeur  of  Christ  as  a  spiritual  teacher,  and  a 
more  than  man,  when  I  have  been  simply  reading  and  listening  to 
him  in  his  frequent  dialogues  with  the  people  he  happened  to  meet. 

I  heard  a  Lecture  once  from  a  certain  man,  on  his  first  visit  to 
Europe,  from  which  he  had  just  returned  He  was  a  professional 
elocutionist,  and  he  dwelt  considerably  on  the  public  speakers  of 
England,  and  imitated  them.  And  among  the  rest,  he  recited  a 
vain-glorious  temperance  speech  which  he  heard  at  a  mass  meeting 
in  Exeter  Hall,  London.  And  he  did  it  so  well,  and  I  listened  in 
so  much  exercise  of  imagination,  that  I  saw  the  whole  situation  as 
plainly  as  though  I  had  been  there.     What  the  lecturer  omitted,  I 


94  YALE  LECTURES. 

furnished.  I  even  saw  the  clothes  the  temperance  orator  wore ; 
noticed  how  they  fitted  him,  and  of  what  fabric  they  were  made. 
That,  and  numbers  of  other  things,  I  furnished,  because  my  imagi- 
nation was  stirred,  and  I  instinctively  sought  a  full  picture.  And 
the  result  was  this  ;  two  or  three  years  after,  I  told  a  circle  of  people 
that  I  attended  a  mass  temperance  meeting  in  Exeter  Hall ;  that  I 
there  heard  a  certain  man  speak,  and  that  he  said  this  and  that, 
which  I  went  on  to  recite  precisely  as  I  had  received  it  from  the 
lecturer.  I  sincerely  told  that  lie,  in  complete  forgetfulness  at  the 
time,  that  I  did  not  myself  hear  the  speech  but  had  only  been  told 
of  it.  I  had  been  in  England,  and  in  Exeter  Hall,  and  that  assisted 
me  to  imagine  the  situation,  I  suppose,  but  the  point  I  am  after  is, 
that  the  imagination  has  an  almost  unlimited  capacity  to  see  things 
— absent  things — historic  things — faces  that  disappeared  long  ago — 
paintings,  buildings,  natural  views, — vanished  sunsets, — death  scenes, 
— Jesus  at  the  well, — Jesus  at  the  grave  of  Lazarus, — Jesus  at  his 
last  Passover  in  Jerusalem  that  moon-lighted  night  eighteen  cen- 
turies ago.  I  do  not  know  that  it  is  best  to  have  your  imagination 
make  pictures  so  good  that  after  a  little  you  cannot  remember 
whether  they  may  not  be  realities  you  have  once  seen  rather  than 
the  weird  work  of  the  mind ;  but  I  think  I  had  rather  be  carried  to 
that  extreme  occasionally,  and  tell  some  lies  about  Exeter  Hall  ora- 
tors than  to  hear  things,  and  read  history,  and  pass  through  life  with 
no  visional  energy,  and  reproductive  enthusiasm,  whatever.  When 
I  read  that  Judaism  and  Christianity  are  highly  elaborated  corre- 
lates, and  am  shown  point  by  point  the  amazing  details  of  that 
correlation,  I  want  at  last  to  gather  up  that  complex  thing,  Judaism, 
as  in  one  vast  unit  before  my  mind,  and  that  other  complex,  Chris- 
tianity ;  and  play  them  off  against  each  other  back  there  in  history 
as  in  a  visible  back  and  forth.  When  I  read  that  we  all  rose  from 
the  dead  in  the  rising  of  Jesus,  I  get  my  best  impression  of  it,  by 
picturing  it — a  magnificent  scene.  When  I  read  of  the  Judgment, 
let  it  be  a  scene  to  me.  So  Heaven, — so  Hell, — so  the  millennium, 
— so  the  intercession  of  Christ  at  God's  right  hand, — I  do  not  want 
to  hear  about  them,  I  want  to  see  them.  And  in  many  of  these 
things,  the  Bible  assists  us  to  see,  and  means  to  make  us  see.  Wit- 
ness its  diversiform  imagery  in  regard  to  Heaven ;  a  place  of 
pastures,  sweet-waters  and  plenties,  a  place  of  choirs  and  hosannas, 
a  four-walled  metropolis  of  solid  great  measurements,  and  of 
precious   decorations   and  resplendencies,  gorgeous  as  an  oriental 


YALE  LECTURES.  95 

dream.  There  are  the  figures  in  profusion,  and  you  will  do  well  to 
use  them  for  the  refreshment  of  your  mind,  and  the  vivification 
of  your  conception,  and  not  decline  them  as  sensuous,  and  confused, 
and  too  likely  to  physicalize  Heaven. 

Now,  so  much  I  have  said  on  the  value  of  the  imagination  in 
interpreting  the  imaginative  parts  of  the  Bible,  (which  include 
pretty  much  all  parts). 

I  shall  add,  at  present,  only  one  thing  more.  Years  ago,  when 
John  Bright  had  just  made  one  of  his  massive,  unflinching,  reform- 
atory speeches  before  the  people  of  England,  a  displeased  conserva- 
tive Journal  in  London  complained  that  he  had  no  "moral  imagi- 
nation "  as  they  called  it;  by  which  they  meant,  as  was  explained, 
that  he  had  not  the  imagination  necessary  to  put  himself  in  the 
place  of  an  opponent,  and  appreciate  his  views.  A  great  omission, 
that,  in  the  make-up  of  anybody.  If  some  desperate  work  of 
reform  is  to  be  done, — as  when  Wm.  Lloyd  Garrison  began  against 
slavery — perhaps  the  man  who  is  to  do  the  work  had  better  not  see 
the  other  side  too  plainly.  Horses  go  best  with  blinders.  What  is 
wanted  of  them  is  to  go  along,  and  not  be  getting  broad  views,  and 
diversified  views,  to  confuse  their  minds.  So,  if  old  school  Calvin- 
ists  and  new  school  Calvinists,  should  sympathetically  understand 
each  other's  arguments,  it  might  weaken  them  both,  and  perhaps 
destroy  the  schools.  Still,  I  should  rather  not  be  a  reformer  at  all, 
or  an  effective  polemic,  than  to  come  short  of  "  moral  imagination." 
A  theologian  who  cannot  carry  himself  over  into  another  and  con- 
trary theologian's  ideas,  so  completely  as  to  be  mitigated  and 
temporarily  weakened  as  it  were  by  his  plausibilities,  has  not  a 
complete  and  well-proportioned  mind,  is  not  in  the  way  to  make 
discoveries,  and  is  an  unprofitable  leader  of  the  public.  Of  some 
use  he  is,  I  have  admitted ;  just  as  sometimes  a  military  leader  is  of 
special  value  because  all  he  knows  is,  to  fight  the  enemy  imme- 
diately before  him,  might  and  main ;  and,  if  whipped,  to  keep  on 
fighting  as  though  nothing  had  happened ;  and  therefore  never  be 
whipped.  However,  who  would  choose  to  be  that  kind  of  useful 
man,  rather  than  a  captain  of  all-including  comprehension.  Speak- 
ing of  discoveries,  the  way  to  know  Calvinism  is  to  go  there,  and 
the  way  to  know  materialism,  or  dualism,  or  atheism,  is  to  go  there ; 
disagreeable  spots  to  visit,  some  of  them,  but  you  must  go — and  of 
all  the  faculties  of  the  mind,  it  is  literally  true,  that  the  only  one 
able  to  go  is  imagination.     You  may  have  so  much  imagination, 


96  YALE  LECTURES. 

and  may  stay  so  long  on  these  sympathetic  visits,  as  to  be  devital- 
ized by  them,  and  never  have  any  settled  opinions  ;  (you  will  meet 
such  people  out  in  the  world,  and  they  are  the  worst  kind  of  afflic- 
tion to  the  unimaginative  brethren,  who  always  know  exactly  what 
they  believe,  and  why  nothing  else  has  the  least  reason  to  be 
believed) — so  keep  watch  of  yourself,  in  your  imaginative  excursions 
among  the  Isms,  but  make  the  excursions,  and  get  to  yourself  the 
big  sense  and  human-heartedness  that  come  of  them. 

This  gift  to  "put  yourself  in  his  place,"  is  quite  indispensable 
to  the  preacher.  Hundreds  of  able  men  just  miss  of  success  all 
their  lives,  because  they  cannot  limber  themselves  to  that.  The 
point  was  hit  very  well  for  substance  by  an  eminent  man  and 
speaker,  whom  I  heard  thirty  years  ago  say  : — The  young  preacher 
cries — "Be  good — be  good," — the  old  preacher  says  : — "  My  dear 
friends,  if  you  cannot  be  good,  then  be  as  good  as  you  can."  Life 
has  taught  him  what  human  nature  is,  and  what  human  nature's 
difficulties  are.  He  has  had  some  rough  times  getting  his  own  self 
to  be  good,  and  certain  parts  of  him  are  not  even  yet  made  willing. 
Also  he  has  moved  about  among  men,  and  tried  to  lift  on  them, 
and  coax  them  to  try  to  lift  on  themselves ;  and  therefore  when  he 
stands  up  in  his  pulpit,  he  is  like  a  cannonier,  who  before  he 
opened  his  guns  had  reconnoitered  the  position  he  was  to  bombard, 
so  that  he  dropped  in  his  shells  just  right.  And  then  there  is  such 
a  luxury  in  preaching,  when  you  preach  sympathetically ; — such  a 
luxury  for  you  and  such  a  luxury  for  the  people.  They  do  not  like 
to  be  fired  at  by  a  glib  expert  who  knows  guns  perfectly  but  does 
not  know  men, — who  makes  first-rate  arguments  but  does  not  hit 
anybody,  because  nobody  stands  just  where  he  aims.  Every 
preacher's  eyes  are  more  or  less  askew,  for  shooting,  until  he  has 
been  over  among  the  people,  and  appreciates  their  situation. 

Hence,  misshots.  The  imaginative  and  sympathetic  preacher 
(sympathetic  because  imaginative) ,  has  two  good  and  straightforward 
eyes. 


IMAGINATION  IN  SERMONS. 


In  my  last  Lecture  I  called  you  to  consider  the  function  of 
Imagination  in  theology ;  I  now  ask  you  to  consider  Imagination  in 
Sermons. 

It  may  seem  inordinate  in  me  that  I  give  one  mental  faculty  so 
much  space,  in  a  brief  series  of  discourses,  especially  as  that  faculty 
is  by  no  means  the  supreme  one  in  the  minister's  outfit ;  but  I  had 
some  things  requiring  to  be  said  as  to  pulpit  diction,  which  could 
come  in  under  the  title  I  have  just  put  forth  as  well  as  under  any 
other,  and  so  I  have  ventured  it. 

I  think  that  in  organizing  the  materials  of  a  sermon,  and  get- 
ting a  skeleton  that  shall  be  alive  and  physiologically  articulated  at 
all  the  joints,  one  goes  through  a  mental  operation  precisely  like  the 
painter's  when  he  makes  a  picture — an  original  landscape.  The 
painter  has  in  his  mind  the  several  features  that  are  to  go  into  that 
picture ; — in  other  words,  he  has  on  hand  the  materials  for  it  from 
out  of  Nature's  boundless  storehouse.  It  shall  be  a  sunset  in  the 
Adirondack  wilderness,  in  the  autumn,  when  the  whole  warm 
air  shines,  and  is  in  a  sweet  swoon  of  peace,  and  pensiveness ; 
a  region  he  has  often  visited  just  at  that  season.  In  his  memory 
and  happy  mood  is  everything  that  goes  to  make  that  late-year 
northland  what  it  characteristically  is.  He  will  get  his  lay  of 
the  land  from  one  locality,  his  forest  features  perhaps  (some 
of  them)  from  another,  his  touch  of  water  from  another,  his 
mountain  distances  from  still  another,  and  possibly  he  will  shed 
through  all  an  individual  feeling  from  his  own  heart,  which  those 
places  cannot  quite  furnish ;  but  which  is  in  no  wise  incongruous  to 
those  places  : — some  added  tenderness  in  the  half-sad  autumnal 
splendor,  it  may  be,  drawn  from  his  experiences  in  this  weary  world. 
Now  those  constituent  particulars  must  come  together  in  his  picture 


98  YALE  LECTURES. 

imaginatively.  It  is  not  carpenter- work  he  is  called  to.  First,  he 
must  imaginatively  see  those  sober  glories  of  the  Autumn,  those 
waters,  those  trees  and  those  heights.  Not  remember  them.  That 
is  not  enough.  That  is  too  cold.  He  must  remember  them  emo- 
tionally, lovingly,  with  the  vivid  reality  of  a  thorough-going  interest, 
and  that  is  Imagination  as  distinguished  from  recollection.  Or,  to 
use  the  terminology  of  my  last  Lecture,  it  is  Imagination  recollec- 
tive. 

Next,  he  must  combine  those  clearly-seen,  beautiful  remem- 
brances ; — and  he  must  combine  them  in  such  a  way  that,  although 
the  counterpart  of  the  picture  can  be  found  nowhere  in  all  broad 
Nature,  yet  it  shall  be  natural ;  after  the  precise  manner  of  Nature  ; 
just  what  Nature  would  have  done  if  she  had  happened  to  think  of 
it ;  Nature's  very  style. 

He  might  throw  on  to  his  canvass  all  those  artistic  recollections 
of  his,  and  thus  get  what  combination  there  maybe  in  juxtaposition  ; 
but  that  is  nothing.  That  does  not  make  a  picture.  There  is  no 
life  in  it ;  no  coherency,  no  proportion,  no  answering  of  part  to  part, 
no  naturalness,  that  is,  nothing  that  Nature  ever  did  or  would  ever 
consent  to  do.  Nature,  as  we  see  her,  is  the  silent  rhetoric  of  God, 
his  way  of  expressing  himself,  his  practical  testimony  as  to  what  He 
likes ;  and  all  human  art,  (real  art)  is  simply  a  loving  conformity 
to,  or  reproduction  of  his  style  :  which  style  we  suppose  was  not 
taken  up  by  him  arbitrarily,  but  in  deepest  reason,  or  because  he 
could  not  remain  a  reasonable  being  and  not  take  it  up,  if  he  took 
up  any  style  and  expression  at  all. 

Well,  how  shall  our  painter  get  his  divine  combination.  He 
cannot  tinker  it  up,  as  I  have  already  said.  He  needs  more  than  a 
good  mechanical  intellect ;  more  than  reason  even  : — he  needs 
Imagination  in  its  creative  function ;  not  its  recollective  function, 
its  creative — exactly  the  faculty  which  God  had  when  he  filled  the 
primeval  voids  with  his  picturesque  creations,  great  and  small  and 
numberless.  I  have  struck  now  an  ultimate  fact  of  the  human  mind. 
I  asked,  how  does  that  man  combine  ?  Nobody  knows.  He  does 
not  know,  himself.  He  has  in  him,  as  a  man  made  in  the  image  of 
God,  a  power  to  create  pictures  that  are  not  a  blasphemy  against 
Nature,  and  therefore  are  pictures.  That  is  the  whole  story — the 
whole  explanation,  I  mean.  His  mental  movement  in  that  creative 
act  is  spontaneous,  unreflective,  instinctive,  instant,  and  emergent, 
like  a  birth  ;  a  great  joy,  but  a  great  mystery ;  a  man-mother  he  is, 


YALE  LECTURES.  99 

and  who  shall  tell  how  growth  goes  on  in  the  creative  womb.  It  is 
amazing  that  a  feat  so  complex  as  that  combination  can  be  per- 
formed so  uncalculatingly,  and  so  at  a  stroke ;  a  feat  so  complex,  I 
say,  for,  when  he  throws  his  parts  together,  they  modify  each  other, 
and  are  therefore  no  longer  the  same  things  that  they  were  when  in 
separation.  Certain  colors  kill  each  other.  Stand  up  a  tall  man  by 
a  short  one,  and  the  tall  one  tails  and  the  little  one  shortens.  So 
our  painter  must  discount  all  those  mutual  modifications  of  parts, 
on  the  instant  when  he  conceives  his  picture.  It  will  not  do  to 
rush  in  all  the  parts  and  clip  and  hew  and  match  afterwards.  That 
were  botchy.  That  were  to  be  a  mechanic.  That  were  unlike  the 
Infinite  Creator.  No,  he  must  rhyme  part  with  part,  and  make  the 
whole  thing  sing  by  a  stroke  of  the  Imagination  exercising  herself 
in  her  most  awe-inspiring  function. 

Now  a  sermon,  in  its  highest  idea,  is  a  work  of  art,  if  there  ever 
was  one.  It  need  not  be  made  for  art's  sake,  or  with  a  predomi- 
nant artistic  impulse,  the  moral  earnestness  of  the  minister  may  fill 
his  whole  consciousness,  so  that  he  has  no  thought  of  art  and  would 
abhor  himself  if  he  had — nevertheless  when  you  come  to  examine 
that  outcome  of  his  mind  and  soul,  behold  it  is  artistic ;  it  is  not 
merely  truthful,  it  is  esthetic,  it  pleases  the  taste  ;  unbeknown  to 
himself  he  has  wrought  a  work  satisfactory  to  all  the  gods  ;  it  has 
the  effect  of  a  picture  ;  his  numerous  items  of  material  are  in  there, 
in  juxtaposition  to  be  sure,  but  (ten  times  more  than  that)  in  con- 
gruity,  in  organic  coherency,  in  a  wonderful  mutuality,  each  item 
fashioning  every  other  item  with  which  it  stands  related.  So  in 
the  Apollo  Belvidere,  limb  is  joined  to  limb  and  function  to  func- 
tion in  an  elastic  harmony  and  mutual  support  and  fine  equilib- 
rium, which  fascinates  one  like  a  poem.  That  is  the  sermon  in  its 
perfect  form  when  the  Imagination  has  done  its  whole  work  upon  it. 

Sermons  are  oftimes  formed  in  a  mutilated  way.  The  forma- 
tive instinct  in  the  author  was  not  strong  enough,  and  the  result  is  a 
living  thing,  with  numerous  disproportions.  Perhaps  it  is  all  dis- 
proportions. The  man  haphazarded  along  through  it,  and  you 
would  say,  that  it  has  no  law  and  order  at  all,  did  you  not  know  that 
even  disorders  have  their  laws.  The  higher  sort  of  mind  moves  in 
philosophical  order,  and  that  we  all  call  order,  as  though  there  were 
no  other.  But  if  the  sermonizer  moves  in  the  utmost  possible  incon- 
sequence, and  gets  from  point  to  point  by  connections  the  most 
trivial, — as  where  the  word  that  happens  to  be  last  in  each  sentence 


100  YALE  LECTURES. 

is  permitted  to  suggest  the  next  thought, — even  there,  there  is  law,  a 
law  of  association  between  the  thoughts ;  so  that  you  have  in  the 
production  an  artistic  element — a  slight  one — and  are  pleased.  It 
is  not  utter  madness — though  even  in  madness  there  are  obscure 
links  of  coherency  in  the  thinking,  whereby  the  mind  makes 
known  that  it  still  resists  confusion  and  absolutely  will  not  surrender 
to  chaos  and  be  a  personal  entity  no  longer. 

I  might  give  you  illustrations  of  discourses  unimaginatively  or- 
ganized— though  I  need  to  leave  this  part  of  my  subject  pretty  soon. 

Sometime  since  I  prepared  a  line  of  discourses  on  Old  Testa- 
ment personages,  in  which  I  proposed  to  know,  myself,  all  that 
could  be  known  about  those  several  men  and  women.  So  I  made 
my  studies  rather  prolonged  and  minute  and  accumulated  more 
material  than  I  could  use  ;  which  furnished  me  a  good  opportunity 
to  see  whether  or  not  I  had  any  imagination  for  the  work  of  pict- 
uresque organization  of  material.  The  prose  way  of  discoursing  on 
those  characters,  would  have  been  to  start  in  at  their  birth,  or  earlier 
(among  their  ancestors)  and  after  getting  them  born,  travel  right 
along  down  their  lives  chronologically,  telling  everything,  little  and 
great,  thing  after  thing  in  stupid  faithfulness  and  garrulity  like  the 
chattering  nurse  in  Rome,  five  minutes  on  a  little  quiet  thing  and 
five  minutes  on  a  great  one,  mechanically  conscientious  and  equit- 
able— for  is  not  a  thing  a  thing,  forever — that  is  the  prose  way,  I 
say,  of  doing  such  discourses  (and  all  discourses).  But  the  way 
of  Imagination  is  thus  : — She  selects  from  her  superabundant  mate- 
rial, as  that  painter  did ;  and  she  puts  to  the  front  those  things — a 
few — which  show,  and  contain,  the  life,  soul  and  essential  spirit  of  the 
person  to  be  portrayed,  in  his  distinctive  attributes.  There  are  words, 
and  there  are  deeds  and  passages,  in  every  one's  life,  whereinto  are 
compressed  his  entire  self;  by  them  you  know  instantly  his  whole 
compass,  his  essential  temper,  his  determinate  rank  in  the  creation  ; 
and  after  that  to  search  through  the  vast  minutiae  of  his  career  is 
unnecessary  : — or,  if  you  do  search,  there  is  no  need  to  take  it  all 
into  your  public  discourse.  Life  is  not  long  enough.  The  intellect 
and  patience  of  human  hearers  are  limited.  You  must  stop  speaking 
sometime ;  and  while  you  are  speaking,  you  must  make  headway 
along  your  road ;  you  must  not  pick  every  flower,  and  point  out 
every  view,  and  sit  down  on  every  green  spot ;  you  must  rapidly 
gather  the  general  bloom  of  things ;  and  whereinsoever  you  intro- 
duce into  your  picture  of  the  man  in  question,  the  secondary,  and 


YALE  LECTURES.  101 

little,  in  his  career,  you  must  do  it  by  a  touch ;  put  those  trifles  in 
the  vistas  yonder,  in  the  background.  That,  I  repeat,  is  the  way  of 
the  imagination. 

And  what  I  noticed  in  myself  was  this  (to  tell  the  whole  story)  : 
when  I  was  not  fagged  and  limp,  I  had  the  stamina  to  see  that  idol 
and  strive  for  it,  and  partially  reach  it ;  but  when  my  brain  had  gone 
all  and  utterly  into  preliminary  work,  I  inclined  to  tell  all  I  knew, 
stringing  it  along  in  a  dull,  petty,  chronological  manner,  which  had 
in  it  the  somnolency  and  endlessness  of  the  flow  of  time. 

That  is  one  illustration  of  unimaginative  organization,  and  I 
might  give  many.  It  is  unimaginative  to  have  your  sermon  taper 
instead  of  cumulate,  like  the  breaking  away  of  waters,  tremendous  at 
first  and  feeble  at  last ;  or  like  a  thunder-burst,  magnificent,  and 
followed  by  a  long  patter  of  ineffectual  rain-drops.  It  is  unimagi- 
native to  swell  one  head  of  your  discourse,  to  the  injury  of  the 
others.  An  eye  to  proportion — an  artistic  eye,  would  avoid  that. 
It  is  unimaginative  to  fall  in  love  with  the  portico  of  your  sermon, 
and  elaborate  it  till,  in  the  nature  of  things,  the  sermon  itself 
cannot  amount  to  much,  comparatively.  That  is  setting  up  a  tall 
man  along  side  of  a  little,  to  the  injury  of  both.  These  unbalanced 
developments  are  caused,  sometimes  by  redundant  vigor  and  some- 
times by  lack  of  vigor.  A  man  full  of  fire,  and  full  of  matter, 
enjoys  an  unfenced  range,  like  a  swollen  spring  river,  and  inclines 
to  take  it.  A  man  feeble,  on  the  other  hand,  when  he  comes 
to  sermonize,  is  like  a  feeble  man  carrying  a '  burden ;  he  stag- 
gers about,  and  the  lines  of  grace  and  proportion  he  knows  not. 
But  in  the  case  of  men  weak  and  of  men  strong,  the  more  defi- 
nitely they  have  the  idea  of  a  rightly  organized  discourse,  and  the 
more  they  discipline  themselves  on  that  idea,  the  more  will  they 
come  to  move  artwise ;  until  after  not  many  years  one  may  find  it 
almost  impossible  to  be  otherwise  than  substantially  artistic.  The 
gondoliers  in  Venice,  navigating  forever  along  narrow  canals 
bounded  by  the  stone  walls  of  the  buildings,  and  compelled  to  shy 
those  walls,  will  graze  them  to  a  hair,  hundreds  of  times  a  day,  and 
never  strike ;  as  though  the  prudence  and  skill  of  the  boatman 
had  at  last  passed  into  his  craft,  and  given  it  the  self-preserving  in- 
stinct of  a  human  soul ;  and  it  is  one  of  our  satisfactions  that  by 
dint  of  much  effort,  and  much  repetition,  and  that  self-restraint 
which  is  one  of  the  most  difficult  of  lessons  for  powerful  and  ebullient 
minds,  law-keeping  and  rigid  art-work  may  become  second  nature. 


102  YALE  LECTURES. 

I  wish  to  repeat  once  more,  that,  although  I  use  the  word  art  a 
good  deal  in  relation  to  sermons,  I  do  not  mean  that  sermons  are 
to  be  made  in  devotion  to  art  as  the  supreme  enthusiasm  of  the 
preacher's  soul — surely  he  has  grander  inspirations  than  that ; — but 
sermons  are  to  be  fashioned  into  some  shape,  either  good  or  bad  ; 
and  while  a  badly  formed  sermon  may  not  wholly  fail  of  good 
effect,  yet  the  good  effect  is  not  the  result  of  the  bad  form  ever — 
but  in  spite  of  bad  form  rather;  and  always,  other  things  being 
equal,  the  sermon  artistically  constructed  most  pleases  God,  and 
most  powerfully  reaches  men.  That  is  the  reason  I  am  talkative  on 
this  subject  and  urgent. 

But  let  us  pass  now  to  the  language  of  the  pulpit,  and  to  Imagi- 
nation as  related  to  the  use  of  language. 

It  has  been  generally  agreed  that  words,  most  of  them,  are 
physical  things,  in  the  sense  that  they  were  originally  descriptive  of 
physical  phenomena.  They  were  descriptive  of  those  phenomena, 
either  as  imitating  the  sound  of  them — for  example,  plash  and 
dash  mimic  the  noise  of  waters,  and  rush  and  buzz  and  whizz  the 
noise  of  wings  ; — or  as  being  mysteriously  fitted  in  some  other  way 
to  express  those  phenomena.  I  cannot  enter  into  the  acute  con- 
troversies of  scholars  at  this  point ; — as  for  instance,  whether  the 
great  body  of  terms  are  strictly  imitative  in  their  origin.  It  is 
enough  for  me  that  the  specialists  in  this  department  incline  to 
unanimity  on  the  idea  that,  in  one  way  or  another,  human  language 
began  in  physical's,  and  in  all  subsequent  use  has  smacked  of 
the  same.  The  first  use  of  language,  naturally,  was  to  indicate 
things  visible,  tangible,  and  audible ;  the  things  of  sense ;  but  by 
and  by,  as  man  developed  into  self-consciousness,  and  reflected  on 
his  own  states  of  mind,  it  became  necessary  for  him  to  devise  terms 
descriptive  of  those  states  ; — and  behold  !  then  it  was  found  that 
the  physical  terms  before  mentioned  were  suitable  to  that  purpose. 
Somehow,  they  were.  Somehow.  And  how?  Some  say,  the  words 
to  voice  the  supersensible  were  arbitrarily  chosen,  just  as  mathema- 
ticians chose  the  letters  of  the  alphabet  to  express  the  quantities 
which  they  manipulate,  when  there  is  not  the  least  thing  in  those 
letters  making  them  more  fitted  to  the  use  in  question,  than  forty 
other  conceivable  signs  might  be.  But  whether  the  truth  or  not,  the 
most  fascinating  opinion  seems  to  be  that  if  the  words  which  express 
physical  phenomena  are  also  convenient  to  describe  immaterial  phe- 
nomena, and  have  actually  been  put  to  that  use,  it  is  because  there 


YALE  LECTURES.  103 

is  some  subtle,  ordained  similitude  between  those  physicals  and  those 
immaterials  ;  something  which  makes  them  the  best  instruments  to 
that  end.  Of  course  by  long  use  words  tend  to  lose  their  original, 
sensuous  flavors,  and  the  average  man  is  likely  to  be  confident  that 
all  words  which  have  been  applied  to  supersensible  uses  for  ages, 
have  had  the  face-marks  of  their  original,  physical  coinage  entirely 
rubbed  off,  and  are  now  insignificant  and  arbitrary  terms,  like  the  a,  b, 
c,  and  y,  z,  of  the  algebraist.  And  the  average  man  is  right,  to  this 
extent : — that  the  mass  of  men  use  language  without  recognizing  or 
caring  to  recognize,  the  primary  import,  and  suggestion,  of  each 
term  they  speak.  It  is  enough,  they  think,  to  say,  reflect,  without 
recollecting  the  fact  that  it  means  turn  back ;  and  distract  without 
recollecting  that  it  means  pull  apart,  and  prefer,  without  recollecting 
that  it  means  set  before.  Why  should  we  recollect  these  things 
(say  they)  : — what  use  is  there  in  it,  when  the  mental  states  indica- 
ted by  reflect,  distract,  and  prefer,  are  unmistakably  pointed  out, 
and  fixed,  without  recollecting. 

In  regard  to  this  view,  I  put  in  two  observations — and  by  those 
observations  get  to  the  point  in  this  subject  which  I  am  concerned 
to  reach. 

First.  That  words  themselves  seem  to  have  an  instinct  of  their 
origin,  in  that  each  word  is  inclined  to  refuse  forever  to  be  applied 
to  any  use  in  the  vocabulary  of  the  supersensible,  which  is  contrary  to, 
and  destructive  of,  its  primal  and  physical  import.  Reflect,  for  in- 
stance, meant  turn  back ; — well,  reflect  never  can  be  brought  to 
consent  to  being  applied  to  a  forward-reaching  action  of  the  mind  ; 
it  knows  its  own  meaning  if  the  average  man  does  not,  and  it  pro- 
poses to  stand  by  its  own  first  meaning,  whether  men  care  anything 
about  it  or  not.  There  is  that  fine  and  curious  persistency  in  words. 
They  do  not  ask  for  any  combinations  of  scholars  to  preserve  them 
from  perversion ;  they  preserve  themselves.  They  are  not  afraid  to 
be  used  profusely  by  the  unthinking  and  inexact  multitude ;  they 
know  that  they  rule  their  own  destiny  and  can  never  be  confused. 
That  first. 

Secondly,  it  is  the  privilege  of  every  man — and  every  preacher 
— to  enter  into  this  secret  of  primary  significances,  and,  when  he 
uses  a  word,  to  use  it  with  a  relish  of  its  origin ;  a  thorough-going 
test  in  many  cases — a  zest  similar  to  his  who  handles  antique  manu- 
script, or  an  old  missal,  or  a  piece  of  armor  worn  by  a  world's  hero 
in   some   world-convulsing   exigency ;  or   any  other  thing   that  is 


104  YALE  LECTURES. 

wonderful  and  full  of  pathos  by  reason  of  its  history.  Words  are  not 
sounds  but  things,  when  you  track  them  back  to  things.  The  signa- 
ture of  the  Duke  of  Wellington,  was  so  many  letters  plus  the  Duke, 
and  all  terms  of  language  are  so  many  words  plus  things,  solid  things, 
concrete  indestructible  actualities. 

It  may  be  questioned  whether,  in  the  swift  run  of  utterance, 
especially  of  public  utterance,  any  man  is  capable  of  tasting  his  own 
words  in  that  way,  and  enjoying  their  ground  flavors,  and  hearing 
their  primeval  undertone.  But  all  men  have  some  sense  of  the  words 
they  use,  else  they  could  not  go  on ;  and  nobody  would  want  them 
to  go  on.  They  may  not  sense  the  physical  element  therein,  but 
they  sense  something  in  them.  They  do  it  with  infinite  rapidity. 
Even  when  they  utter  hundreds  of  words  a  minute,  they  are  sprightly 
enough  to  catch  up  some  honey  from  each  term.  And  if  they  can 
catch  some,  they  can  catch  more  ; — in  fact  a  practiced  and  schol- 
arly man  can  catch  enough  to  keep  him  in  a  sort  of  intellectual  in- 
toxication. I  have  listened  to  men  in  public  discourse  who  have 
sometimes  jerked  me  from  my  sitting  almost  by  some  heavily-charged 
word,  or  some  sudden  compact  and  fiery  sentence.  Language 
spoken  is  not  a  flight  of  dull,  wooden  balls,  but  an  outgoing  of 
bells,  sonorous  meanings  old  and  new,  tones  of  time,  tones  faint  and 
far-away  sometimes,  but  distinct  and  good  like  the  clear  whistle  of 
the  boatswain  in  a  hurricane. 

And,  as  I  have  implied,  when  a  man  uses  language  in  that  per- 
ceptive and  pregnant  way,  all  people  who  listen  to  him  catch  the 
contagion  of  his  gusto.  The  most  ignorant  feel  that  something  is 
going  on ;  that  the  man  is  not  showering  forth  X's,  Y's,  and  Z's, 
which,  as  simple  letters,  signify  nothing,  so  that  so  far  as  effect 
is  concerned  he  might  as  well  vociferate  inarticulately ;  but  that 
there  is  a  boom  in  all  he  says. 

Why  is  it  that  old  sermons  are  such  unusable  ammunition,  the 
abhorrence  of  the  preacher  and  the  soporific  of  the  hearer.  When 
first  preached  they  were  good  enough  ;  first-rate,  every  one  thought, 
perhaps.  What  has  happened  to  them  ?  Nothing.  There  they  are 
in  their  aboriginal  grandeur.  But  something  has  happened  to  the 
preacher.  When  that  discourse  first  came  from  him,  he  was  in  the 
full  sense  of  its  terms  : — he  finished  it  Saturday,  and  by  Sunday 
the  birth-warmth  was  not  dead  in  it — he  spoke  what  he  knew,  and 
what  he  knew  as  he  went  along ; — every  common  word  was  alive  to 
him,  and  he  was  alive  in  it ;  but  since  then  time  has  slipped  in,  and 


YALE  LECTURES.  105 

many  events,  and  he  has  lost  his  connection  with  his  words ;  they 
were  his  at  the  time,  he  gathered  them  up  from  the  general  stock 
and  mass  of  language  and  made  them  his,  but  now  they  have  gone 
back  into  the  general  and  public  stock  again  and  are  not  his,  and 
therefore  when  he  uses  them  he  feels  like  a  hypocrite — he  is  saying 
what  he  does  not  feel,  dispensing  words  that  he  has  not  refilled. 
They  are  hollow,  and  sound  hollow,  and  he  wishes  he  was  out  of  it. 
The  only  way  to  make  an  old  sermon  an  honest  thing  and  mag- 
netic again,  is  to  pass  it  through  a  re-gestation  ;  let  it  enter  a  second 
time  into  its  father's  womb  and  be  born. 

And  I  have  had  a  fancy  that  sermons  delivered  memoritor 
must  be  ever  more  in  the  curse  of  old  ones,  more  or  less.  I  never 
memorized  a  sermon,  but  I  have  memorized  speeches — long  ago — 
and  when  I  spoke  them,  I  always  felt  that  I  was  shamming ;  and  to- 
day, when  I  listen  to  such  an  orator,  I  am  seized  with  a  painful  feel- 
ing of  unreality.  I  imagine  I  am,  at  any  rate.  I  must  not  be  too 
dogmatic  about  this,  because  eminent  men,  I  believe,  are  advoca- 
ting the  memoritor  practice.  Possibly,  enough  practice  and  some 
native  facility  takes  a  preacher  at  last  beyond  the  unrealism  of  this 
business  : — for  it  is  unreal  to  be  talking  to  your  fellow  men  in  the 
use  of  only  one  mental  faculty,  the  memory — or  in  the  use  of  that 
mainly.  When  you  stand  before  a  congregation  you  profess  that 
you  are  there  and  that  it  is  you  who  speak,  whereas  there  is  noth- 
ing there  but  your  memory,  I  am  supposing,  (your  memory  and 
your  body,)  which  is  not  you  by  nine-tenths,  or  more. 

But,  as  I  said  before,  I  must  not  make  myself  offensive  to 
wiser  men  than  myself.  When  they  speak  of  their  freedom,  and  joy 
and  effectiveness  in  this  kind  of  preaching,  I  love  them,  and 
believe  what  they  say ;  but  I  am  not  convinced. 

I  spoke  of  using  words  in  the  delight  of  original  relishes ;  but 
I  must  add,  as  a  part  of  my  subject,  that  these  root-relishes  are  not 
the  only  ones  a  preacher  may  have  in  his  sermonizing. 

When  a  word  has  started  and  passed  into  use,  it  begins  to  have 
a  history,  and  after  many  years  it  has  gained  a  great  history ; — it 
has  had  to  do  with  great  men  and  great  events,  and  it  has  the  same 
interest  that  an  eminent  personage  has.  Let  William  Gladstone 
land  on  our  shores,  or  Victoria,  or  Alfred  Tennyson,  and  it  would 
not  be  the  landing  of  so  much  flesh  and  blood,  five  to  six  feet  high, 
weighing  from  one  to  two  hundred  pounds  ;  but  it  would  be  the  land- 
ing of  the  Queen  of  England,  the  Poet  Laureate  of  England,  and  the 


106  YALE  LECTURES. 

Statesmanship  of  England  ; — it  would  be  the  arrival  of  incarnate  Eng- 
land, as  you  might  say.  In  like  manner,  words  have  arrived  in  our 
century,  all  moss-grown,  and  festooned  with  associations,  picked 
up  in  their  long  journeyings  down  from  times  of  old  ;  and  it  is  so 
much  added  to  a  man's  pleasure  in  the  use  of  them  and  so  much 
added  to  the  force  of  his  expression,  if  his  mind  detects,  and  savors, 
those  precious  additions. 

And  another  thing.  Supposing  I  admit  that  all  this  thought  of 
mine  in  regard  to  root-relishes  and  historical  relishes  (as  I  have 
called  them)  is  visionary ;  and  that,  however  perceptive  and  imagi- 
native a  man  may  be,  he  simply  cannot  get  back  into  those  old 
contents  of  the  words  he  uses.  Grant  it  to  be  true  that  the  greater 
part  of  human  words,  in  the  long  attrition  of  use,  have  been  rubbed 
down  till  their  coinage  is  not  visible,  and  they  therefore  are  simply 
conventional  signs,  which  could  be  just  as  well  exchanged  for  nu- 
merical signs  : — the  particular  mental  act  now  called  reflection  being 
called  i,  and  the  act  called  perception  2,  and  the  act  reverence  10 ; 
supposing  that  to  be  so.  It  is  a  highly  afflictive  supposition,  but 
we  will  put  up  with  it  for  a  minute  or  two.  Has  imagination  there- 
fore ceased  to  be  of  great  account  to  the  writer  and  speaker,  in  his 
choice  of  language,  and  in  his  joy  while  he  uses  it?  I  tell  you  nay. 
For,  as  these  empty  conventional  signs  are  employed  to  designate 
this  and  that, — as,  reflection,  perception,  reverence,  and  the  like, 
among  things  spiritual  and  physically  imperceptible,  and  thou- 
sands of  things  likewise  in  the  physical  domain ;  it  is  of  great  im- 
portance that  those  numerous  designated  things  should  be  lumi- 
nously and  intensely  seen,  at  the  instant,  by  the  man  speaking  and 
writing  ;  and  it  belongs  to  Imagination  to  do  just  that  thorough  and 
fervid  seeing.  If  that  seeing  is  not  done,  or  in  proportion  as  it  is 
not  done,  words  have  no  sense  at  all.  I  have  already  supposed  that 
they  have  no  historical  and  derivative  meanings,  and  that  they  are 
like  human  beings  without  an  ancestry  or  a  creator ;  and  now  their 
only  other  possible  significance  is  taken  away  from  them.  The 
preacher  writes  them  down  and  delivers  them  to  his  people,  as  so  many 
Zeros.  He  has  no  interest  in  them  ; — for  how  can  he  have  an  in- 
terest in  terms  that  came  from  nowhere,  and  are  practically  pointed 
at  nothing.  And  as  he  has  no  interest  in  them,  the  interest  of  his 
hearers  cannot  amount  to  much,  and  I  do  not  see  why  preaching 
should  be  any  longer  continued.  No,  no.  If  I  say  a  word  to  mean 
something,    I    must  distinctly  see  that  intended  thing — the  more 


YALE  LECTURES.  107 

distinctly  the  better — and  that  seeing,  in  so  far  as  it  is  realistic,  and 
emotional  and  picture-like,  is  the  work  of  Imagination. 

While  I  am  on  this  matter  of  language,  with  its  coinage  all 
effaced  by  centuries  of  use,  permit  me  to  refer  you  to  old  creeds  and 
old  liturgies  as  frequently  examples  of  that  thing.  The  creeds  and  the 
liturgies,  in  themselves,  are  well  enough ;  but  reiteration  tends  to 
dull  a  man's  sense  of  words  ; — if  he  does  not  watch,  and  incessantly 
energize  upon  them,  he  loses  not  only  their  genetic  meaning  and 
vigor,  and  not  only  their  historical  meaning  and  vigor,  as  understood 
by  the  theologians  and  their  generation  who  wrote  them,  but  also 
their  present  meanings ;  and,  in  this  loss  of  all  meanings,  the  reci- 
tation of  these  forms  is  as  useless  as  an  inarticulate  monotone. 
Even  that  monotone  might  have  some  good  influence  in  it,  pro- 
vided it  was  solemn,  and  I  should  advise  people  to  congregate  on 
the  Lord's  day  and  go  through  that,  if  nothing  better  could  be  had. 
The  sound  of  the  wind  in  pine  forests  is  moral ; — all  grave  tones 
steadily  prolonged  are  moral ;  and  liturgies  will  live  and  creeds  will 
keep  on,  for  the  sake  of  the  sound  of  them  if  for  no  other  reason  ; — 
but  it  must  hurt  their  feelings  dreadfully  to  be  reduced  to  that, 
when  they  are  conscious  that  they  are  live  things ;  that  they  had  a 
parentage  and  a  powerful  parentage,  and  have  had  a  career,  too  ; 
that  they  did  mean  something  on  the  lips  of  those  who  made  them, 
and  were  intended  to  describe  forever  certain  august  realities. 

I  should  like  to  spend  about  twenty-four  hours  of  continuous 
speech  here  in  your  presence,  running  the  terms  of  the  Nicene 
Creed  back  to  their  radicals  (so  far  as  possible,)  reproducing  the 
history  too  of  that  great  symbol,  and  especially  its  origination,  and 
then  when  you  and  I  had  come  into  full  possession  of  the  dear  old 
thing,  standing  up  all  together  and  reciting  it.  We  should  hardly 
be  able  to  contain  ourselves.  The  familiar  drone  of  utterance 
would  be  changed  to  a  play  of  thunderclaps,  comparatively.  We 
should  have  a  Mt.  Sinai  here,  and  an  awfulness  as  of  God  made 
visible  and  audible. 

We  sometimes  deplore  the  theological  discussions  that  come 
up,  and  are  afraid  that  the  phraseologies  of  the  fathers  will  get 
pounded  into  dust  by  the  combatants,  and  we  shall  never  have  them 
any  more  ;  but  these  contentions  are  one  resounding  way  of  notify- 
ing men  that  they  must  not  any  longer  use  their  old  phrases  in  an 
imitative  and  numb  manner ;  that  they  must  get  themselves  back 
into  the  sense  of  their  creeds,  the  historical  sense,  and  see  whether 


108  YALE  LECTURES. 

they  are  willing  to  subscribe  to  that  sense  wholly — if  they  are,  it  will 
be  good  for  them  to  have  been  forced  to  do  it  afresh ;  and  really 
their  creeds  now  will  be  the  very  breath  of  their  life  ;  while  if  they  find 
themselves  not  willing  to  subscribe,  they  are  put  into  a  wholesome 
live  struggle  to  make  something  whereto  they  can  subscribe,  and  can 
voice  in  assembled  multitudes  with  a  holy  awe,  and  a  holy  jubilation. 

For  one,  I  have  ceased  fearing  that  time-honored  forms  in  the 
church,  creedal  and  liturgic,  will  suffer  permanent  damage,  in  the 
vehemency  and  crush  of  debate.  The  Catholic  symbols  are  the 
common-sense  of  the  Christian  ages,  crystallized  and  solidified  ;  and 
they  will  bear  a  good  deal  of  knocking  about.  They  are  the  survi- 
vals of  the  fittest,  and  are  therefore  likely  to  survive.  I  do  not  know 
what  verbal  modifications  may  be  forced  upon  them,  nor  how  far 
their  phrases  may  be  refashioned  ;  but  I  certainly  do  not  look  to  see 
any  breach  in  their  substance.  And  as  to  forms  less  hallowed,  what- 
ever they  are,  forms  provincial,  forms  denominational,  forms  philo- 
sophical, I  am  glad  to  see  them  put  through  the  threshing  mills  of 
debate,  at  intervals,  so  that  the  immortal  in  them  may  redemon- 
strate  its  indestructibility,  and  the  partial  and  ephemeral  in  them 
may  be  compelled  to  show  its  insufficiency.  Not  all  insufficient 
things  are  worthless.  The  butterfly  needs  a  worm-form  by  which 
to  climb  to  its  winged  state ;  and  Truth  seems  to  be  willing  to  put 
up  with  imperfect  statements,  by  way  of  transition  to  something 
higher.  She  is  a  veritable  butterfly,  though,  in  heart  and  fact, 
whether  detained  as  yet  in  her  worm-life,  or  all  emerged  and  fair. 

Another  service  which  Imagination  renders  us  in  our  sermon- 
izing, is  her  prolific  contribution  of  images,  and  imageries,  drawn 
from  life  and  from  Nature. 

It  is  thought,  by  some,  to  be  dangerous  to  accept  these  contribu- 
tions and  let  them  into  our  pulpit  language.  And  it  is  dangerous, 
provided  we  are  going  to  be  so  delighted  with  them  as  to  use  them 
for  their  own  sake.  If  we  abjure  all  esthetical  dairyings,  all  dancing 
up  and  down  in  a  twitter  over  our  pretty  things  that  we  have  thought 
of,  our  analogies,  and  decorations,  and  fanciful  outflowerings ;  if  we 
just  robustly  turn  all  our  devices  of  words  in  upon  the  ends  of  God, 
the  benefit  of  men  and  the  setting  forth  of  his  glory,  then  Imagina- 
tion is  not  merely  innocent,  but  it  is  the  very  life  of  speech.  And 
see  what  things  she  does. 

First,  mark  in  what  an  omniverous  and  rich  way  she  works  up 
into  utterance,  all  the  familiar  things  of  human  life, — even  its  homely 


YALE  LECTURES.  109 

things  ;  though,  to  tell  the  truth,  the  moment  she  touches  them  they 
are  no  longer  homely,  but  are  transfigured  in  the  light  she  sheds. 
Did  you  ever  watch  the  workings  of  prose  minds  and  observe  how 
undaintily  they  handle  the  common,  and  are  vulgarized  by  their  con- 
tact with  it.  They  bring  it  into  the  sanctuary  sometimes,  and  it 
does  not  fit  the  holy  place  and  is  an  offence.  They  cannot  enter 
the  common,  without  wallowing  in  it  and  drowning ;  whereas  the 
imaginative  mind  is  like  the  birds  that  cut  the  water,  and  even  the 
puddle,  with  their  swift  wing  and  toss  it  up  into  the  shine  and 
sparkle  of  the  sun.  William  Wordsworth  undertook  a  good  deal  of 
that  kind  of  work,  (the  working  up  of  the  common  into  noble  ex- 
pression) and  did  not  always  succeed,  some  thought ;  but,  in  larger 
part,  he  did  succeed,  and  beautified  life  at  many  points.  Robert 
Burns  succeeded.  Thomas  Carlyle  succeeded  pretty  often.  What 
pile  was  there  in  which  that  man  would  not  grub,  when  his  rage  was 
on  him  ;  but  how  rarely  his  grubbing  soiled  him,  and  how  full  his  writ- 
ings are  of  the  affairs  that  surged  around  him ;  full  of  the  great  and 
noble,  full  of  the  minute,  and  the  lowly  and  the  mean  ;  full  of  human 
life  as  it  literally  went  on  in  his  day  and  land,  whether  in  palace,  or 
bog  hut ;  its  tragedy,  comedy,  pathos  and  glee. 

This  charging  of  rhetoric  with  the  strong  stock  of  daily  and 
humble  things,  is  often  seen  in  uncultivated  and  even  vulgar  men, 
who  are  under  no  bondage  of  conventionalities  and  speak  their  minds 
with  absolute  veracity,  and  point-blank.  Witness  that  western  bor- 
der-man, described  by  Mark  Twain,  a  man  earnest  and  coarse,  but 
affectionate,  who  sought  the  services  of  a  minister  just  on  from  the 
East,  well-dressed,  civil-spoken,  and  proper,  to  attend  the  funeral  of 
a  prominent  rough  whom  all  the  rude  men  believed  in,  and  loved, 
and  who  must  be  spoken  of  in  funeral  speech  with  force  and  enthu- 
siasm. Read  what  he  says  and  take  in  the  vividness  and  reality  of 
it.  I  rode  with  a  New  York  omnibus  driver  once  upon  a  day  for 
some  miles,  on  the  top  of  his  vehicle,  and  heard  his  opinion  on 
many  things ;  and  noticed,  first,  that  he  had  opinions  sharply  de- 
fined and  reserved ;  next,  that  he  had  no  fear  of  mortals  in  showing 
them  ;  and  finally,  that  he  had  a  powerful  vocabulary,  part  slang  and 
part  English  ;  but  all  of  it  bottomed  on  concrete,  on  stage-driving 
or  other  plain  and  ponderable  realities. 

Sailors  speak  in  the  same  way  often,  and  hunters,  and  the  mob, 
seasoning  their  talk  with  terms  drawn  from  their  own  craft,  and 
putting  in  sledge-hammer  emphases,  like  the  heavy  strokes  of  their 


110  YALE  LECTURES. 

daily  toil.  Of  course,  nothing  can  redeem  such  talk  as  that  about 
Buck  Fanshavv's  funeral,  and  we  must  all  keep  wide  away  from  the 
absolutely  gross  ;  but  a  refined  man  with  poetic  capacity — with 
Imagination,  I  mean — can  touch  and  turn  almost  anything  into 
gold — he  can  make  the  dirt  blossom  into  a  beauty  that  seems  sky- 
born  ; — and  he  does  it  in  ways  that  are  easy  to  his  faculty ;  as,  for 
example,  where  a  thing  is  too  gross  for  direct  expression,  and  yet 
has  value  in  it,  he  just  alludes  to  it,  in  a  far-away  manner,  in  the  use 
of  some  term  that  is  itself  high  and  fine,  it  being  a  curious  fact  that 
the  purest  and  most  cultured  minds  will  receive  a  quite  unmention- 
able thing,  provided  it  is  conveyed  by  indirection,  and  with  a  self- 
evident  non-fellowship  with  its  mere  grossness. 

But  life  is  full  of  things  not  gross,  but  only  common,  and  lowly, 
and  those  we  may  easily  use — and  men  most  scholarly  and  fastidi- 
ous may  take  these  up  into  their  speech  profusely,  and  had  better. 
A  man  of  horses  and  stables  in  my  congregation,  long  ago,  left 
the  church  after  one  of  my  sermons,  saying  : — "  Our  Minister  is 
pretty  strong  on  the  bit."  Now  there  was  no  harm  in  that. 
After  an  evening  of  uneasy  and  uncomfortable  debate,  wherein 
a  certain  Mr.  Blank  had  been  combative  and  unpleasant,  a  man  said 
to  me  as  we  left : — "  He  had  the  hay  on  his  horns  to-night,  sure 
enough."  Could  anything  be  better  than  that,  drawn  from  farm 
experiences?  To  say  : — "  Blank  was  combative,"  would  have  been 
abstract  and  decorous ;  but  Imagination  brought  in  a  contrary- 
minded  and  punching,  horned  creature,  who  punches  for  sheer 
punching's  sake,  and  just  because  she  is  overflowing  with  wicked- 
ness ;  as  is  shown  by  the  fact  that  she  lunges  into  innocent  and  un- 
resisting haystacks.  You  see  the  animal  with  her  head  bestrown, 
and  her  look  of  general  belligerency.  It  is  pictorial.  It  is  like 
Dr.  John  Brown's  description  of  the  great  dog  Rab,  whom  he  has 
made  immortal  in  that  sweetest,  and  realest,  and  deepest  of  sketches, 
"Rab  and  his  Friends."  "He  belonged  to  a  lost  tribe"  (said 
the  Doctor.)  "  He  was  brindled  and  grey  like  Rubislaw  granite  ; 
his  hair  short,  hard,  and  close,  like  a  lion's  ;  his  body  thick-set  like 
a  little  bull — a  sort  of  compressed  Hercules  of  a  dog.  He  must  have 
been  ninety  pound  weight,  at  the  least ;  he  had  a  large  blunt  head  ; 
his  muzzle  black  as  night,  his  mouth  blacker  than  any  night,  a  tooth 
or  two  being  all  he  had,  gleaming  out  of  his  jaws  of  darkness.  His 
head  was  scarred  with  the  records  of  old  wounds,  a  sort  of  series  of 
fields  of  battle  all  over  it,  one  eye  out,  one  ear  cropped  as  close  as 


YALE  LECTURES.  Ill 

was  Archbishop  Leighton's  father's ;  the  remaining  eye  had  the 
power  of  two  ;  and  above  it,  and  in  constant  communication  with  it, 
was  a  tattered  rag  of  an  ear,  which  was  forever  unfurling  itself  like 
an  old  flag ;  and  then  that  bud  of  a  tail,  about  one  inch  long,  if  it 
could  in  any  sense  be  said  to  be  long,  being  as  broad  as  long ; — 
the  mobility,  the  instantaneousness,  of  that  bud,  were  very  funny 
and  surprising,  and  its  expressive  twinklings,  and  winkings,  the  inter- 
communications between  the  eye,  the  ear,  and  it,  were  of  the  oddest 
and  swiftest.  "  Rab  had  the  dignity  and  simplicity  of  great  size  ; 
and  having  fought  his  way  all  along  the  road  to  absolute  supremacy, 
he  was  as  mighty  in  his  own  line  as  Julius  Csesar  or  the  Duke  of 
Wellington,  and  had  the  gravity  of  all  great  fighters."  Dr.  Brown 
then  goes  on  to  compare  Rab's  look  with  the  look  of  the  great 
Baptist  preacher,  Andrew  Fuller,  and  declares  them  alike.  That 
is  what  the  Doctor  said  about  Rab ;  and  anybody  who  cannot  see 
that  pictured  dog,  ought  to  be  bitten  by  him. 

I  am  speaking  of  Imagination  dealing  with  lowly  things,  and 
making  the  lowly  interesting  and  even  noble,  and  I  made  this  quo- 
tation under  that  head  ;  but  I  cannot  help  diverting  long  enough  to 
point  out  the  fine  interfusion  of  that  faculty  through  almost  every 
word  of  that  piece  of  writing.  First  of  all,  and  before  he  began,  the 
Doctor  evidently  with  his  mind's  eye  saw  his  dog,  in  his  total  pre- 
sentment and  rounded  majesty  and  vigor.  There  he  stood  gnarly 
and  real — all  dog.  There  is  a  sort  of  genius  in  that.  Then  notice 
his  word-work.  He  compares  the  dog's  color  to  that  of  Rubislaw 
granite,  but  in  that  comparison,  after  the  true  manner  and  instinct 
of  Imagination,  he  secures  more  than  color ;  he  gives  a  foreshadowing 
of  the  dog's  massiveness  and  solidity.  Rubislaw  granite,  said  he. 
Next,  he  compares  his  hair  to  a  lion's  hair,  and  in  that  he  secures  hair 
for  Rab  and  a  leonine  element.  A  distinct  imaginative  advance  in  the 
description.  Another  man  would  have  said  : — "  his  hair  was  short, 
hard,  and  close,"  but  Brown  added  : — "  like  a  lion's."  Then  : — "  his 
body,  was  thick  set,  like  a  bull,  a  sort  of  compressed  Hercules  of  a 
dog."  Mark  those  vigorous  concretes,  bull,  and  Hercules — and  that 
splendid  adjective,  compressed.  If  he  had  simply  said  Hercules,  he 
would  have  done  a  strong  thing,  and  touched  Rab  off  with  a  sort 
of  dignity ;  but  when  he  added,  compressed  Hercules,  he  got  his 
description  down  to  the  dimensions  of  a  dog  and  at  the  same  time 
dropped  out  not  a  single  penny-weight  of  the  Herculean  strength, 
but  only  condensed  it  and  made  it  more  awful.     Then  his  mouth, 


112  YALE  LECTURES. 

a  midnight  abyss  and  mystery,  made  more  dark  by  two  white  teeth 
in  it.  And  his  head  mapped  with  battle-fields,  (his  fighting 
character  still  amplified  upon,  you  see,  that  is,  kept,  in  the  foreground 
in  the  midst  of  all  comparisons,  and  by  them)  ; — his  ear  close  cut 
off  (more  fight) — like  the  father  of  Archbishop  Leighton  (a  humor- 
ous and  affectionate  assimilation  of  dog  life,  and  human  life,  wherein 
the  man,  (the  bishop's  father)  lost  nothing  and  the  dog  got  a 
love-lift.  Then  :  "  the  other  eye  had  the  power  of  two  " — how  har- 
monious that  is  with  all  we  have  already  been  made  to  know  of 
Rab  : — it  is  an  addition  to  the  picture,  but  it  is  an  addition  con- 
gruous with  granite,  lion,  little  bull,  compressed  Hercules,  and 
scarred  head — a  tremendous  eye.  And  his  one  remaining  ear  was 
torn,  and  tattered,  and  flag-like,  but  fearfully  vital,  and  moving  yet : 
(more  fight,  and  more  energy  and  compressed  Hercules.)  And 
his  little  tail  was  vital  and  moving,  and  knowing — it  twinkled  and 
winked  just  as  anybody  might,  and  it  interchanged  cute  winks  with 
that  wide-awake  ear — the  realism  of  the  thing  is  enough  to  make  a 
dog  laugh — the  personalization  of  those  small  members  is  so  com- 
plete that  you  cannot  take  your  eyes  from  them,  you  would  almost 
be  willing  to  be  a  dog  yourself,  to  have  so  much  sense  in  your 
humble  members.  No  mere  man  ever  did.  And  then  lest  Rab 
might  seem  to  be  nothing  but  a  fighter  and  so  be  vulgarized,  the  imag- 
inative and  deep-hearted  Doctor  informs  us  that  he  was  dignified, 
grave,  and  simple,  and  looked  like  the  Rev.  Dr.  Andrew  Fuller.  It 
would  have  been  prosaic  to  say  that  Rab  had  some  mental  qualities 
like  men.  Of  course,  he  had.  All  dogs  have.  That  is  a  fact  in 
nature — a  bald,  common  fact.  But  Imagination  loves  to  get  in  her 
bald,  common  facts,  and  make  people  see  them,  in  a  way  of  her 
own,  in  a  way  so  that  they  shall  see  them  and  take  to  them,  and  be 
thoroughly  pleased,  melted  and  won  over.  So  in  this  case,  having 
given  us  a  plain  painting  of  Rab's  face — a  strong  face,  but  not 
really  pious — she  breathes  a  mild  transfiguration  over  it  and  leads 
you  to  embrace  it,  in  a  burst  of  laughter,  by  mentioning  the  dis- 
tinguished and  excellent  Dr.  Fuller,  the  great  and  mighty  Baptist 
Rab. 

In  all  this,  my  Friends,  you  note  the  distinctive  marks  of  that 
faculty  on  which  I  have  now  said  so  much  : — its  vigorous  and  visional 
perception,  its  creative  combinations,  its  heart  and  heartiness,  so 
that  it  can  be  warm  and  fond  over  a  dog  and  can  drag  Julius  Caesars 
and  eminent  men  of  divinity  into  dog-likeness,  and  not  belittle  the 


YALE  LECTURES.  113 

men  either — true  imagination  would  never  do  that ;  and  its  capacity 
to  put  itself  in  his  place,  whether  the  place  be  Rab's,  as  in  this  case, 
or  Dr.  Chalmers',  or  dear  little  Marjorie  Fleming's,  as  in  other  essays 
of  this  same  John  Brown — than  whom  no  better  compacted,  or  more 
divinely-tender  and  true  man  was  ever  brought  forth  of  the  great 
Brown  stock,  I  venture  to  say. 

I  have  really  now  no  time  left  in  which  to  speak  as  I  ought  of 
the  images,  and  imageries,  and  numerous  enrichments,  which  Imagi- 
nation can  bring  into  the  diction  of  the  pulpit,  out  of  endless  Nature. 
We  preachers  have  just  as  much  right  to  Nature  as  poets  have.  To 
be  sure,  when  we  go  to  her,  we  go  on  serious  business,  and  we  are 
after  grave  material  therefore,  and  poets  had  better  go  in  about  the 
same  way — all  the  great  ones  do  ; — moreover,  Nature  is  grave,  any- 
way ;  her  most  festive  shows  do  not  start  a  man  into  any  frivolity  or 
thin  giggle.  Nature  is  never  jocose.  She  makes  us  laugh  some- 
times, but  it  is  in  some  sort  as  the  melodious  thunders  laugh,  not 
in  jollity,  but  in  the  soberness  of  a  great  joy. 

And  what  can  we  get  from  Nature  ?  Well,  read  the  Poets  and 
see.  We  can  get  her  repose  ;  and  a  really  restless  diction  is  not  pos- 
sible to  him  who  is  in  habitual  communion  with  her.  He  insensibly 
gathers  up  into  his  speech  the  spirit  of  her  tranquilty.  Also,  we  get 
rhetorical  truthfulness  and  reality.  I  have  praised  Imagination  a 
good  deal,  but  an  imagination  that  does  not  live  in  Nature,  and  in 
real  life,  and  start  all  her  flights  from  that  solid  ground  is  a  phan- 
tasmal and  moony  creature,  an  inadmissible  wild  one  in  the  pulpit, 
in  poetry,  in  art,  and  in  all  human  expression. 

We  have  seen  that  it  is  the  instinct  of  the  Imagination  to  make 
original  combinations,  as  in  landscape  painting ;  but  those  original 
combinations  must  be  strictly  conformable  to  Nature,  in  all  respects. 
They  must  be  made  up  of  natural  material,  of  actual  trees,  flowers, 
seas,  green  fields,  hills,  skies,  showers,  and  commotions — and  they 
must  organize  those  actualities  as  Nature  herself  is  wont  to  organize 
them  ;  otherwise  the  picture  is  an  insane  thing.  Well,  how  shall  we 
get  this  truthfulness,  but  by  much  companionship  with  Nature.  In 
other  words,  we  get  naturalness  from  Nature.  And  an  Imagination 
that  conserves  its  naturalness  by  an  habitual  stand  in  Nature,  is  sure 
of  itself,  and  sure  to  do  realistic  and  acceptable  work,  when  called 
(as  the  Imagination  often  is,)  to  move  out  into  the  supernatural, 
and  picture  things  over  there.  A  man  not  thoroughly  naturalized 
in  Nature  is  utterly   flighty   and   ridiculous   out  there.     A  writer 


114  YALE  LECTURES. 

introduces  some  supernatural  character  into  his  drama,  I  will  suppose. 
Well,  that  supernatural  personage  must  be  made  to  speak,  and  be- 
have himself,  something  different  from  a  man,  for  in  that  way  only- 
can  it  be  shown  that  he  is  not  a  man,  but  a  superior  being ;  never- 
theless he  must  be  made  to  act  naturally  after  all — that  is,  in  the 
general  manner  of  human  nature,  else  all  human  readers  will  spew 
him  out.  Imagination  projecting  herself  into  the  unheard-of,  and 
spinning  stories  of  that  land,  must  keep  her  two  feet  down  solid, 
all  the  while,  on  the  heard-of  and  familiar,  and  in  that  way  keep  up 
some  sort  of  congruity  between  those  two  lands.  And  all  imagina- 
tive rhetoric — in  the  pulpit  or  elsewhere — must  perpetually  rationalize 
itself  and  make  itself  valid  and  acceptable  to  good  taste  ;  to  Nature 
in  Nature,  and  to  Nature  or  the  natural,  in  human  life  as  well. 

I  repeat,  we  can  get  from  Nature  truthfulness  and  reality  in 
our  pulpit  expression. 

And  again,  we  may  diversify  and  beautify  our  expression,  and 
make  it  pithy  and  rich  from  the  same  source.  The  forms  and 
activities  of  Nature  are  a  vast  language  prepared  to  our  hand,  and  it 
is  as  legitimate  to  express  ourselves — all  the  realities  of  our  souls  and 
all  the  realities  of  our  total  life  on  earth — through  her  forms,  as  it  is 
to  studiously  keep  away  from  her,  and  use  only  conventional  terms 
out  of  which  the  Nature  element  has  evaporated  at  last,  so  that  they 
are  supposed  to  have  a  dry  and  colorless  precision.  I  am  not  argu- 
ing on  the.  question  of  their  superior  precision,  otherwise  I  might 
deny  it,  but  what  I  am  particularly  after,  at  this  present,  is  the 
variety,  and  beauty,  and  vividness,  and  celestial  pith  of  the  natur- 
alistic diction.  Dr.  Brown  called  Rab  a  bull,  a  lion,  a  Hercules,  a 
mass  of  granite  of  a  certain  color,  a  series  of  old  battle-fields,  as  far 
as  his  head  was  concerned  ;  a  Julius  Caesar  and  a  Dr.  Fuller — and 
several  more  things.  He  might  have  said — Rab — and  stopped. 
But  that  would  not  have  been  much  to  us  who  never  saw  Rab.  He 
might  have  said  lion,  or  bull,  and  stopped.  Or  he  might  have 
named  the  Duke  of  Wellington  and  Julius  Csesar,  and  stopped,  But 
I  would  not  have  had  him  omit  Andrew  Fuller  for  anything.  What 
would  Rab  have  been,  without  Fuller  added.  Don't  you  see, 
Dr.  Brown  knew  the  value  of  natural  comparisons,  and  what  hun- 
dreds of  them  there  are,  and  what  endless  modifications  may  be  put 
upon  a  dog  by  using  them  freely  ?  So  in  that  case  where  Hamlet 
addressed  the  skull  of  Yorick.  First  he  said  he  had  ridden  on  Yo- 
rick's  back  a  thousand  times.     (That  is  a  good  many  more  than  he 


YALE  LECTURES.  115 

ever  did  ride — but  Imagination  may  speak  with  liberty  and  she 
never  seems  to  be  lying:)  in  fact  it  was  truer  to  say  a  thousand, 
than  to  tell  exactly  how  many  times  he  did  ride.  Next,  Hamlet 
said  : — "  Here  hung  those  lips  that  I  have  kissed  I  know  not  how  oft." 
Next : — "  where  be  your  gibes  now?  Your  gambols?  Your  songs? 
Your  flashes  of  merriment  that  were  wont  to  set  the  table  on  a  roar." 
Hamlet,  in  this  instance,  drew  his  particulars  from  human  life  and 
not  from  Nature,  but  how  every  added  touch  increased  the  visibility 
of  Yorick  to  our  eyes  and  made  him  to  us  an  interesting  human 
thing. 

I  plead  for  this  versatility  and  profuseness  in  ministers.  Turn 
all  creation  into  your  diction.  Thomas  Carlyle  ended  his  life  of 
Oliver  Cromwell  by  calling  England  an  ostrich,  with  its  "  head  stuck 
into  the  readiest  bush  of  old  church-tippets,  king-cloaks,  or  what 
other  sheltering  fallacy  there  may  be,  and  so  awaits  the  issue."  He 
closes  his  life  of  Robert  Burns,  with  this  eulogy,  and  tender  simili- 
tude :  "  While  the  Shakespeares  and  Miltons  roll  on  like  mighty 
rivers  through  the  country  of  thought,  bearing  fleets  of  traffickers 
and  assiduous  pearl-fishers  on  their  waves,  this  little  Valclusa  foun- 
tain will  also  arrest  our  eye  ;  for  this  also  is  of  Nature's  own,  and 
most  cunning,  workmanship,  and  bursts  from  the  depths  of  the  earth 
with  a  full-gushing  current  into  the  light  of  day ;  and  often  will  the 
traveler  turn  aside  to  drink  of  its  clear  waters,  and  muse  among  its 
rocks  and  pines."  His  life  of  Richter  he  ends  with  this  natural 
touch  : — "  In  the  moral  desert  of  vulgar  Literature,  with  its  sandy 
wastes,  and  parched,  bitter,  and  too  often  poisonous  shrubs,  the 
writings  of  this  man  will  rise  in  their  irregular  luxuriance  like  a 
cluster  of  date-trees,  with  its  green  sward  and  well  of  water,  to  refresh 
the  pilgrim,  in  the  sultry  solitude,  with  nourishment  and  shade." 
He  puts  in  this  comparison  in  the  last  sentence  of  his  life  of 
Heine — referring  to  Heine's  victorious  struggle  against  adverse 
circumstances  : — "  It  is  but  the  artichoke  that  will  not  grow  except 
in  gardens.  The  acorn  is  cast  carelessly  abroad  into  the  wilderness, 
yet  it  rises  to  be  an  oak ;  on  the  wild  soil  it  nourishes  itself,  it 
defies  the  tempest,  and  lives  for  a  thousand  years."  In  the  last 
sentence  of  his  life  of  Schiller,  he  speaks  of  him  as  likely  to  be  "  a 
towering  land-mark  in  the  solitude  of  the  past,  when  distance  shall 
have  dwarfed  into  invisibility  many  lesser  people  that  once  encom- 
passed him,  and  hid  him  from  the  near  beholder."  Near  the  close 
of  his  life  of  Walter  Scott,  he  speaks  of  the  pecuniary  adversities  of 


116  YALE  LECTURES. 

Scott's  latter  years  and  of  the  manful,  strong  and  fatal  drudging  which 
he  did  to  redeem  himself,  and  says  of  him  : — >"  The  noble  war-horse 
that  once  laughed  at  the  shaking  of  the  spear,  how  is  he  doomed  to 
toil  himself  dead,  dragging  ignoble  wheels."  And  in  the  final  sentence 
of  his  sketch  of  Baillie.the  covenanter,  he  calls  him — "a  rather 
opulent,  but  very  confused,  quarry,  out  of  which  some  edifice  might 
in  part  be  built."  An  ostrich  with  its  head  hidden  in  church  tippets 
and  so  on.  A  Valclusa  fountain.  A  cluster  of  date-trees  in  an  oasis. 
An  artichoke  as  contrasted  with  an  acorn.  An  ever-visible  great 
landmark  in  the  great  past.  A  proud  war-horse  condemned  to  wheels. 
A  rich  confused  quarry,  out  of  which  something  might  be  built. 

I  select  these  at  random,  of  course  there  are  a  thousand  more — 
and  they  illustrate  a  rhetorical  habit — a  naturalistic  habit — a  sensu- 
ous and  metaphorical  habit — that  is  particularly  good  for  preachers. 
It  is  legitimate.  It  is  going  straight  to  the  original  store-house  of 
language.  It  is  resorting  to  a  vocabulary  that  can  never  stale.  It 
is  speaking  to  people  in  a  manner  they  can  understand.  It  makes 
the  things  supersensible  and  metaphysical  stand  out,  and  cease  to 
be  abstract  and  remote.  It  weds  Religion  to  Poetry,  and  Poetry 
to  Religion,  where  they  belong.  It  is  imitation  of  the  Bible — an 
oriental,  image-freighted,  and  picturesque  book — which  has  done 
wonders  for  man  as  revealing  a  salvation  for  him,  but  has  done  a 
good  deal  also  to  keep  alive  in  the  cold,  reflective,  precise  and 
abstract  Western  intellect,  the  flush  and  luxuriance  and  many-sided 
metaphorizing,  of  the  fresh  youth  of  the  human  race. 

In  this  multifarious  play  of  analogies,  it  is  possible  to  overload 
your  utterance  and  give  your  hearers  a  feeling  that  their  minister 
was  originally  designed  for  a  kaleidoscope,  and  mostly  enjoys  being 
that,  rather  than  the  bearer  of  a  plain  and  unconfused  message  from 
God  to  perishing  sinners  ;  but  it  is  easy  to  avoid  that ; — the  Bible 
avoids  it — thousands  of  luxuriant  rhetoricians  avoid  it — and  they 
avoid  it  in  the  same  way  that  you  must : — namely,  by  having  a  high 
practical  end  to  the  which  they  are  pushing  with  every  ounce  of  their 
strength.  St.  Paul  tumbles  along  like  a  spring  freshet  sometimes, 
and  his  language  cannot  be  parsed  by  any  known  rules ; — but  he 
does  not  pile  up  any  confusion,  because  the  objective  to  which  he 
drives  pulls  him  on  mightily,  and  pulls  him  clear  out  of  all  word- 
mongering  and  all  thought  of  it.  As  well  could  Jesus  climbing  Cal- 
vary take  pride  in  his  own  gait,  as  this  his  consecrated  Apostle,  work 
up  an  over-elaborate  and  showy  diction,  full  of  confused  glories. 


YALE  LECTURES.  117 

Alfred  Tennyson  does  not  lack  in  these  natural  imageries  of 
which  I  am  speaking,  but  he  is  as  simple  and  easy  to  understand  as 
a  piece  of  Ionic  Sculpture.  I  opened  his  book  of  lamentation  over 
Arthur  Hallam  the  other  day,  and  thought  I  would  show  you  how 
this  most  opulent  of  word-masters  keeps  himself  within  the  lines  of 
absolute  simplicity  and  perspicuity ;  but  I  find  I  have  no  time 
for  that.  See  the  excellent  Imagination  of  John  Henry  Newman, 
but  how  chastened,  orderly,  and  limpid  his  utterance  is.  Jeremy 
Taylor  is  not  so  self- restrained.  And  I  have  felt  that  our  Dr. 
Bushnell  would  have  helped  the  world  to  understand  him  faster  if 
he  had  not  set  an  image  in  his  almost  every  word  like  the  face  and 
flash  of  a  diamond.  Of  course,  this  is  the  peril  of  affluence,  even 
as  overflows  are  the  peril  of  well-watered  lands  ;  but  dear  me  !  let 
us  have  waters  anyhow.  We  will  dam  them.  We  will  hew  channels 
for  them.  And  we  had  rather  be  drowned  in  them,  than  to  dry  up 
and  die  in  the  sand-wastes  of  a  diction  absolutely  and  forever  arid. 


SHORT  SERMONS. 


If  I  say,  as  I  now  do,  that  I  am  going  to  fill  this  present  hour 
with  some  remarks  on  short  sermons,  I  judge  that  it  will  seem  a 
rather  minute  subject  to  some  of  you.  But  I  hope  to  make  it  sizable 
gradually,  by  intertangling  it  with  numbers  of  things  roundabout ; 
for  all  things  are  great  if  only  their  relations  are  opened ; — and 
then  none  of  the  congregations  to  whom  we  are  sent  with  our 
preaching,  have  any  notion  that  short  sermons  is  a  small  title,  I 
fancy ; — the  most  inferior  man  that  listens  to  us  has  his  mind  all  made 
up  on  the  long  sermon  business, — he  may  be  confused  in  theology, 
but  on  that  he  is  clear.  And  he  is  so  numerous  in  these  days  that 
we  preachers  are  forced  to  give  some  sort  of  heed  to  what  he  says ; 
especially  as  all  the  superior  people  are  in  with  him  and  think  just  as 
he  does. 

A  short  sermon  is  a  sermon  that  seems  short ;  it  may  be  fifteen 
minutes  long  or  it  may  be  an  hour.  Time  has  nothing  to  do  with  it. 
If  a  man  is  unconscious  no  speech  seems  long  to  him.  The  hearer 
fast  asleep  is  willing  you  should  go  on  till  you  are  tired  out.  And, 
what  is  the  same  thing,  the  hearer  so  absorbed  by  what  you  are  say- 
ing as  to  be  unconscious,  does  not  charge  the  sermon  with  being 
prolix.  Time  is  measured,  not  by  clocks,  nor  even  by  the  rotation 
of  the  earth,  but  by  the  state  of  our  minds,  and  the  things  going  on 
therein.  All  experience  proves  that.  Absolute  mental  vacuity  has 
no  time-measure,  neither  has  mental  concentration  much. 

But,  I  pass  from  these  scattering  remarks,  to  the  sad  work  of 
drawing  out  a  list  of  the  things  that  make  sermons  seem  long  : — 
things  in  the  minister,  I  mean.  To  be  sure,  there  are  some  things 
outside  of  the  minister  that  will  do  it.  Bishop  Potter,  of  New  York, 
went  to  dedicate  a  very  fine  church ; — and  after  the  service,  when 
the  people  were  gathered  about  in  a  bubble  of  happification  over 


YALE  LECTURES.  119 

the  goodly  edifice  now  completed  and  sanctified,  it  was  noticed  that 
he  was  silent.  And  when  some  one  at  last  ventured  to  inquire  :  "  Do 
you  not  like  our  Church,"  he  said  : — "  O  yes,  it  is  a  grand  estab- 
lishment,— and  has  only  three  faults."  Of  course  they  wanted  to 
know  right  off,  what  those  were.  "  You  can  neither  see,  nor  hear, 
nor  breathe  in  it,"  said  the  Bishop.  As  good  a  description  of  a 
first-class,  modern,  gothic  meeting-house,  as  was  ever  given  perhaps 
— so  far  as  it  goes. 

Well,  sermons  are  apt  to  be  long  inside  of  such  structures. 
The  preacher's  face  is  full  of  holy  emotion,  but  nobody  can  see  it. 
The  preacher's  sermon  is  full  of  the  best  sort  of  material,  and  is 
solidly  phrased,  and  charged  with  edification ; — so  that  one  would 
naturally  say :  "  the  more  of  such  a  sermon  the  better."  But  the 
people  do  not  say  that  who  sit  in  those  parts  where  the  speaker's 
voice  rolls  around  in  reverberations  and  half  of  his  articulations 
are  lost.  The  preacher  is  wide  awake,  demonstrative  and  impressive, 
but  not  to  those  who  are  sensitive  to  bad  air,  and  are  semi-comatose 
on  account  of  it.  My  church  in  Hartford  is  a  little  inclined  to 
some  of  these  weaknesses,  and  I  have  always  felt  that  my  people  do 
not  know  what  a  preacher  I  am.  When  I  take  my  natural  swing  I 
preach  about  forty  to  forty-five  minutes ;  but  a  sermon  of  that 
number  of  pages  in  that  edifice  takes  an  hour,  because  I  cannot 
speak  with  any  rapidity  where  each  word  is  going  to  be  reduplicated, 
and  rolled  around,  and  take  five  minutes  perhaps  in  getting  down 
from  among  the  fascinating  arches  into  people's  ears,  well  lodged  and 
articulate. 

I  could  tell  you  a  great  deal  about  such  things,  from  experience 
and  from  hearsay, — the  miserable  external  things  that  diminish  our 
pulpit  power,  and  make  us  tedious  ; — however,  my  purpose  does  not 
lie  in  that  direction,  but  rather  in  the  direction  of  our  faults,  whereby 
our  sermonizing  has  a  look  of  too  much  length. 

A  montonous  voice  makes  length,  enormously.  There  is  noth- 
ing that  gives  such  a  sense  of  eternity  as  a  well  continued  sober 
monotone.  Always  at  the  sea-shore,  I  think  of  that.  Always,  too, 
in  pine  forests.  The  hum  of  a  distant  factory  will  do  it,  if  only 
the  hum  has  depth  and  solemnity.  I  stood  among  the  graves  around 
Melrose  Abbey  and  heard  the  Abbey  clock  strike  off  the  hours ; 
and  ruminated  on  the  old-time,  and  all-time  sound  of  those  pro- 
longed bell-strokes.  They  were  mellow  enough,  and  not  unalluring 
to  the  esthetic  ear ;  but  I  forgot  all  about  esthetics,  and  all  about 


120  YALE  LECTURES. 

the  graves  that  encircled  me,  some  of  them  interesting  enough ; 
and  all  about  the  dismantled  and  pensive  Abbey,  and  everything 
else  on  earth  or  in  heaven,  and  just  considered  that  unvarying  bell, 
and  the  resound  of  time  in  it. 

So  a  sermon  : — it  may  be  esthetic,  there  may  be  supreme 
melodies  in  it,  it  may  be  architectural,  Abbey-like  or  whatever,  and 
festooned  with  luxuriant  church  ivies ; — a  perfect  love  of  a  sermon  ; 
but  if,  through  it  all,  there  drones  on  a  pulpit  voice,  impressive 
but  eternal, — it  must  be  that  all  men  will  say : — "  is  not  that  a  little 
long, — would  not  our  minister,  good  man,  be  more  edifying  if  he 
knew  when  to  stop."  Well,  he  did  stop.  He  was  only  half  an 
hour,  but  they  had  a  feeling,  all  through,  that  he  had  had  them  in 
hand  twice  that  time. 

Now,  Brethren,  there  are  some  things  continually  operating  on 
preachers  to  make  them  monotonous  in  the  voice  ; — some  things 
particularly  hard  to  resist.  Our  themes  require  a  solemn  voice  in 
the  main ; — and  we  speak  on  holy  days,  and  in  a  holy  place,  and 
after  preparatory  holy  exercises  in  our  closets, — we  are  in  the  pres- 
ence of  God,  and  we  must  cause  the  people  to  feel  that  they  are  ; — 
and  a  voice  dramatic,  a  voice  colloquial,  a  voice  humorous,  a  voice  very 
various  anyway,  seems  utterly  ruled  out  in  the  nature  of  the  case. 

Some  twenty  years  ago,  one  Communion  Sabbath  in  my  church, 
my  wife,  not  being  strong,  thought  she  would  not  arrive  till  the 
close  of  my  discourse.  But  she  arrived  some  minutes  before  the 
close,  and  there  in  the  porch  she  listened  to  my  goings  on.  She 
could  not  hear  the  words,  but  she  heard  the  voice,  and  noticed  the 
voice  all  the  more  because  that  was  all  she  could  hear.  And  I  was 
much  surprised,  and  much  grieved,  to  have  her  say  that  I  moved 
that  morning  in  a  perfectly  measured  and  wearisome  cadence  ; — 
the  thing  I  hated,  and  always  had.  It  showed  me  that  our  kind  of 
work  will  cadence,  and  measure  off,  and  make  tiresome  almost  any- 
body— if  he  does  not  look  out. 

But  how  shall  he  look  out.  First,  let  the  theological  seminaries 
put  their  fledgelings  into  the  hands  of  an  elocutionist,  a  knowing, 
determined,  immitigable  man,  who  will  not  take  no  for  an  answer ; 
and  thus  let  some  incipient  good  habit  be  worked  up  ;  a  glimmering 
possibility,  (if  not  probability),  that  the  young  men  will  begin  right 
in  their  ministry. 

And  when  they  have  begun,  let  them  cultivate  a  theology,  and 
a  general  way  of  looking  at  things,  that  permits  some  flexibility  and 


YALE  LECTURES.  121 

human  warmth  of  voice.  Methodists  never  preach  monotonously. 
They  believe  in  some  terrible  things,  just  as  we  do  ; — no  man  can 
look  out  among  the  facts  of  the  creation  and  honestly  deny  forty 
terrible  things ; — but  they  believe  in  forty  gracious  things  and 
lovely,  super-eminent  over  all  terribles ;  and  believe  in  them  in  such 
heartiness  and  constancy  that  it  keeps  their  feeling  in  a  shout ; — 
their  sermons  shout ; — they  weep,  but  they  shout ; — they  preach 
Perdition  with  a  gospel  underflow  of  hallelujah.  I  heard  them  all 
my  youth,  and  left  them  in  my  youth,  but  I  believe  they  are  more 
right  than  we  are  (many  of  us)  in  this  thing.  Christianity  is  not  a 
Jeremiad — not  exactly.  It  premises  Jeremiads,  and  a  sad  state  of 
things  indescribable,  but  those  Jeremiads  it  proposes  to  drown  and 
it  is  in  the  world  for  that  one  purpose  ; — and  we,  her  messengers, 
ought  not  to  voice  her  in  a  manner  contrary  to  her  genius.  If  we 
let  into  our  voices  the  monotone  of  the  sea  (as  I  suppose  we  must 
a  little  sometimes),  let  the  "  floods  clap  their  hands"  also  therein, 
and  let  an  occasional  land-sound  slip  in,  and  land-smell,  as  flowers, 
mown  grass  and  the  breath  of  the  dewy  night ;  the  creation  is  not 
all  pitched  on  one  key.  The  God  of  dooms  is  the  God  of  beauty 
and  delight,  too — if  there  be  Hells,  and  Hell-glooms,  as  there  every- 
where are,  there  be  also  Paradisaical  radiancies  and  cries  of  joy ; — 
and  in  so  far  as  a  preacher  is  in  the  love  of  God,  continually  show- 
ered forth  on  created  things,  it  will  modulate  his  utterance — it  will 
break  the  flow  of  his  monotony — his  voice,  always  sufficiently 
serious,  will  range  the  entire  scale  of  normal  voices  ;  until  perchance 
by  much  use  and  the  advance  of  age,  his  vocal  chords  are  unelastic 
and  unresponsive  to  the  versatility  of  his  mind.  Then  he  must 
look  what  he  can't  speak — and  by  that  time  his  face  will  have  be- 
come facile  to  such  uses  and  able  to  serve  him  a  good  turn. 

Another  way  to  make  a  sermon  seem  long,  is  analagous  to  the 
first  one ; — namely, — make  your  thought  monotonous,  and  your 
delivery.  In  my  address  on  Imagination  in  Ministers,  I  mentioned 
that,  for  substance,  and  I  will  refer  to  it  again  only  a  moment.  The 
thought  and  the  delivery  of  a  sermon  may  be  monotonously  excellent, 
as  easily  as  monotonously  worthless.  It  is  monotony  in  either  case, 
and  has  in  it  all  the  well-known  effects  of  this  killing  quality.  I  por- 
trayed, you  may  remember,  a  monotonous  man  whom  I  knew — 
whose  sermonizing  had  no  light  and  shade,  no  perspective,  no  power 
of  the  picturesque,  but  worked  on  a  flat  and  was  all  foreground.  Hu- 
man nature  cannot  endure  that.  I  would  bring  humor  into  the 
9 


122  YALE  LECTURES. 

pulpit  in  careful  measures  before  I  would  permit  it.  I  would  let  in 
dialogue  and  great  vivacity  of  gestures.  I  would  diversify  my 
themes  extremely.  I  would  make  one  sermon  a  story ;  and  one  a 
portraiture,  and  one  a  criticism,  and  one  a  conversation,  and  one  a 
dream,  and  one  a  poem  even,  (if  I  could  write  poetry).  Doubtless 
we  do  not  want  to  lower  preaching  from  its  divine  nobleness ;  but 
pokiness  lowers  it  pretty  effectually ; — or  if  it  cannot  be  said  literally 
to  lower  it,  it  does  make  it  of  no  account,  so  that  the  question  of 
high  or  low  ceases  to  be  of  much  interest. 

Again,  a  device  for  making  short  sermons  long  is,  to  have  but 
slow  progress  through  your  subject.  I  look  back  to  my  early  work, 
and  I  find  several  things,  by  which,  unwittingly,  I  slowed  myself 
and  made  those  sermons  undeliverable  in  all  after  years.  I  had  one 
habit  like  this  : — after  putting  forth  a  statement  and  expressing  an 
idea,  I  proceeded  directly  to  state  that  thing,  with  some  slight 
meaning  added,  or  in  some  minute  new  aspect ;  I  was  mincing, 
and  microscopic ;  I  did  not  make  a  long,  free  stride  and  get 
on — I  do  not  know  but  my  father  helped  me  into  that.  He 
was  a  preacher  himself,  and  he  often  declared  to  me  that  the  average 
hearer  is  slow,  and  needs  to  be  nursed  along  into  a  thought  by  a 
large  reiteration  of  it  in  changed  form  ; — not  the  bag-pipe  exactly 
(I  don't  think  he  meant  that),  but  the  bag-pipe  with  two  or  three 
small-voiced  attachments.  Moreover,  I  had  been  under  the  teach- 
ing and  under  the  example  of  Dr.  Nathaniel  Taylor,  and  sympa- 
thetically too,  who  was  a  sharp  reasoner  and  metaphysician,  and 
advanced  by  short  steps  well  taken,  after  the  manner  of  metaphysi- 
cians ; — a  good  thing  when  you  are  proving  a  point  and  do  not 
intend  to  have  your  process  of  argument  broken  at  any  link  by  the 
onset  of  all  other  metaphysicians  combined.  But  congregations 
do  not  like  that ; — they  like  a  bold  brush — never  mind  your  small 
touches — strike  out  your  idea  in  mass,  and  go  along. 

Another  slowness  discovered  by  me  in  those  first  discourses  ■ 
was  a  habit  of  showing  forth  all  the  steps  by  which  I  arrived  at  my 
conclusion ;  as  though  your  physician,  whom  you  had  called,  should 
spend  an  hour  telling  you  just  how  he  reached  your  house,  whether 
on  foot,  wheels,  or  the  back  of  a  horse,  and  by  what  path,  or  cross- 
lot  cut-off.  What  you  want  is  he  and  his  medicine.  And  what  the 
people  want  in  ministers,  is  their  conclusions  mostly,  and  not  the 
laborious  rationalizing  by  which  they  stepped  along  to  them.  There 
is  too  much  of  that  preaching.     It  is  a  good  mental  exercise  to 


YALE  LECTURES.  128 

those  who  will  bear  it,  but  the  nineteenth  century  is  an  impatient 
time,  and  if  you  have  anything  to  say,  wants  you  to  say  it  and  let 
explanations  go.  A  third  way  by  which  I  spun  out,  was  in  proving 
things.  Proving  them.  They  did  not  need  to  be  proved  very  likely, 
but  I  wanted  to  prove  them.  "  O,  we  admit  it,  we  admit  it  all," 
the  people  were  ready  to  say ;  "  but  why  do  you  admit  it,"  thought 
I.  "  I  am  afraid  you  do  not  know  the  reason  of  the  hope  you  hold, 
and  I  am  going  to  tell  you."  And  inasmuch  as  it  frequently  is  the 
case  that  accepted  beliefs  lie  in  the  soul  the  most  non-germinant 
and  useless  things  conceivable,  because  they  have  been  accepted 
traditionally  and  conventionally,  and  not  as  having  been  searched 
out ;  who  shall  say  that  I  did  not  do  some  good  by  my  arguings  on 
the  truisms  of  Religion.  On  the  other  hand,  who  shall  deny  that 
an  outright  affirmation  simply,  from  a  man  who  knows  what  he  says, 
is  not  generally  as  illuminating  and  as  quickening  to  blind  and  dor- 
mant believers,  as  the  logicking  that  we  practice  on  them  at  such 
length. 

Again,  long  introductions  was  a  form  of  tediousness  with  me. 
And  then  many  preachers  call  their  hearers  to  chew  the  cud  of  their 
sermons  over  again,  in  extended  applications  at  the  end ; — too  ex- 
tended, because  too  repetitious  of  what  has  gone  before.  A  subject 
well  wrought  out  is  already  applied,  and  if  the  minister  squares 
around  to  the  work  of  formal  applications,  he  must  give  a  distinct 
impression  in  them  of  substantial  addition  to  what  has  already  been 
said.  The  boy  who  was  whipped  by  his  pious  mother,  and  then 
exhorted,  begged  that  the  exhortations  might  be  left  off.  He  felt 
that  the  subject  had  been  sufficiently  applied  in  the  whipping,  and 
exhortations  were  tedious  and  unedifying. 

Another  form  of  tediousness  in  sermons  is  lack  of  substance. 
An  unsubstantial  discourse  is  always  long.  Some  men  are  unsub- 
stantial because  they  have  too  much  facility  of  thought,  and  too 
much  facility,  especially,  of  expression.  If  you  have  the  gift  to  work 
up  a  small-sized  thought — an  atom  of  a  thing — into  a  voluminous 
rhetoric,  you  are  dreadfully  tempted  to  do  it.  The  days  are  short 
with  ministers, — the  working  hours  in  each  day, — and  their  labors 
are  many,  and  sermons  must  come  along  at  the  rate  of  several  a 
week,  (old  or  new,  or  both),  and  heavy  work  is  not  congenial  to  the 
unsanctified  parts  of  the  ministerial  heart,  so,  if  one  fair-sized 
thought  can  be  spread  over  four  Sundays,  by  force  of  words,  the 
man  feels  as  the  prophet  did  when  he  had  miraculously  expanded 


124  YALE  LECTURES. 

the  widow's  oil.  It  is  a  brilliant  thing  to  expand  ideas  ; — and  if  you 
can  do  it  with  a  suitable  detonation,  as  when  gunpowder  suddenly 
springs  into  gas  and  increases  its  volume  from  a  kernel  the  size  of  a 
pin-head,  to  fill  the  whole  world — why  !  how  can  you  withstand  the 
temptation.  Probably  you  will  not.  And  so,  after  a  while,  your 
people  will  be  looking  around  to  find  what  makes  your  wonderful 
sermons,  half  an  hour  long  only,  feel  as  though  they  had  been 
holding  forth  a  week. 

Extemporaneous  preachers  are  quite  exposed  to  thinness.  But 
that  would  lead  me  into  a  long  and  delicate  discussion,  and  I  dread  it. 

The  only  way  to  make  substantial  sermons  is  to  work.  Of 
course  you  have  genius,  but  you  must  work.  You  are  to  be  a  settled 
minister  I  suppose  ; — how  settled,  time  will  tell ; — but  I  can  give  my 
word  for  it  now,  that  if  you  stay  any,  anywhere,  you  must  work. 
And  you  must  work  by  right  methods.  Only  right  methods  are 
fruitful  methods.  Operate  your  intellect  according  to  the  laws  of 
intellect  and  it  will  teem  forever.  For  example,  work  excursively, 
and  you  run  thin  at  last.  Work  incursively ;  that  is  being  inter- 
preted, penetratively,  analytically,  in  the  long-bore  fashion,  and  you 
will  find  the  artesian  reservoirs  of  the  creation,  and  all  congrega- 
tions will  rejoice  in  you.  And  I  want  to  add,  the  penetrative  habit 
is  as  possible  for  small  brains  as  for  large  ones.  I  do  not  mean  that 
small  brains  can  do  all  that  large  ones  can ;  but  they  can  do  all  that 
they  can ;  while  if  they  do  not  get  into  the  artesian  secret  they  will 
never  do  half  in  their  power. 

If  you  speak  with  a  slow  utterance,  you  will  make  yourself  long  ; 
— long  by  the  church  clock,  but  longer  yet  in  the  feeling  of  your 
audience.  When  I  was  younger  than  I  am  now  I  did  not  think  so 
much  of  this,  but  having  been  pricked  on  it  myself  in  these  latter 
years,  since  I  commenced  to  accommodate  my  speaking  to  a  high- 
class  gothic  interior,  I  am  sensible  of  the  importance  of  the  subject. 
The  force  that  slows  your  articulation  may  be  gothic,  or  it  may  be 
approaching  age,  or  it  may  be  an  extra  solemnity  on  your  part,  or  an 
intense  appreciation  of  what  you  are  saying,  so  that  you  want  to  take 
time  to  hold  on  to  each  word  until  each  word  has  passed  into  your 
mind  its  whole  benediction.  As  to  that  last,  I  find  that  I  am  caught 
in  it  most  when  I  am  reading  the  Scriptures  in  the  public  service. 
I  am  in  some  deep  chapter  of  St.  John,  say ;  and  I  know  that 
I  am  travelling  over  bottomless  beds  of  ore.  I  do  not  know  it 
simply  as  having  been  told  that  there  are  great  beds  there,  I  myself 


YALE  LECTURES.  125 

see  the  gleams  of  them,  and  I  cannot  bear  to  just  mn  along.  So  I 
pause,  and  I  pause,  and  when  I  do  move  I  scarcely  move,  and  the 
people  out  before  me  in  their  pews  who  are  less  perceptive  than  I  at 
the  moment,  see  no  sense  in  my  delaying  and  wish  I  would  go  on. 
Well,  on  the  whole,  I  had  better  go  on.  If  I  alone  were  involved  in 
the  reading,  I  would  take  all  necessary  time,  even  as  in  steam-travel 
through  beautiful  countries  I  would  like  to  slacken  the  train  to  ten 
miles  an  hour,  or  less  ;  but  in  Bible  readings  and  sermon  preachings, 
as  in  trains,  there  are  hundreds  of  others  on  board — some  who  care 
little  for  beauty,  some  who  cannot  possibly  sit  more  than  about  so 
long,  some  who  cannot  concentrate  their  minds  more  than  a  few 
minutes.  Many  classes  indeed,  together  with  some  children,  to 
whom  we  ought  to  accommodate  ourselves  a  little,  it  may  be. 

As  to  slowness  caused  by  solemnity,  I  have  noticed  that  often 
on  ceremonial  occasions.  I  remember  administrations  of  the 
Lord's  Supper  where  several  clergymen  took  part ; — special  occa- 
sions they  were,  so  that  ordinance  was  impressive  beyond  the 
common ; — and  all  those  officiators  took  on,  and  were  loaded  by, 
that  exceptional  impressiveness,  and  they  abated  their  natural  speed 
accordingly,  (real  speed  being  unsolemn,  essentially)  ;  but  when  they 
all  did  that,  and  every  man  of  them  got  on  slower  than  I  ever  saw  him 
before ;  and  when  moreover,  every  one  of  them,  in  my  judgment, 
struck  a  gait  so  deliberate  that  all  show  of  vigor  was  lost  out  of  it, 
and  the  occasion  seemed  more  likely  to  be  languid  than  affirmative 
and  heart-filling,  I  sunk  away  into  wearisomeness.  And,  I  fancy, 
that  our  congregations  (the  congregations  of  some  of  us)  are 
habitually  afflicted  in  the  same  way.  Sermons  are  solemn  things, 
and  ordinances  are  solemn,  and  worship  is  solemn,  and  it  is  a  solemn 
thing  to  live  at  all,  but  we  must  not  be  so  oppressed  by  it  as  to  be 
dumb,  and  when  we  do  speak  we  must  not  drag  behind  a  certain 
natural  and  seemly  briskness. 

I  am  reminded  here  of  that  to-and-fro  of  Scripture  reading 
between  the  minister  and  the  people  which  has  come  into  many  of 
our  unliturgical  congregations.  I  believe  in  it,  and  have  in  it  my 
own  church,  where  it  is  carried  on  heartily  and  unanimously ;  but 
I  have  noticed  that  the  greater  part  of  the  congregations  that  prac- 
tice it,  are  so  slow  in  the  delivery  of  the  words  that  they  feeble  the 
whole  thing.  They  cannot  keep  step  together  well  at  such  a  pace, 
and  they  lose  the  inspiration  of  concord  and  a  solid  march  ;  and 
the  blessed  Scriptures  themselves  seem  to  tame  down  from  their 


126  YALE  LECTURES. 

native  force  under  such  a  languid  handling.  Perhaps  the  liturgical 
churches  incline  to  the  other  extreme.  I  have  felt  so  when  I  found 
myself  unable  to  take  breath  often  enough  to  keep  up  with  them, 
but  then  the  breathing  of  a  Congregational  Minister  is  peculiar  to 
himself,  and  ought  not  perhaps  to  be  enforced  on  all  Christendom. 
That  to  which  we  are  habituated  is  easy  for  us,  and  seems  rational. 
And  it  is  curious  to  notice  how  little  strange  and  open  to  criticism, 
a  service  different  from  our  own  seems,  when  we  have  been  in  it  for 
a  while  and  have  caught  its  rhythm. 

My  next  specification  as  to  sermons  made  long  by  various 
devices,  is,  that  if  your  whole  thought  in  preaching  is  to  unfold  your 
subject,  without  any  special  aim  at  any  person  or  thing  in  the  con- 
gregation before  you,  a  chasm  is  opened  between  you  and  them, 
and  they  look  at  you  across  that  chasm,  as  a  spectacle  principally ; 
an  interesting  one,  perhaps,  but  not  half  so  interesting  as  you  would 
be  if  you  eyed  them  with  a  determined  intention ;  your  eye  roam- 
ing from  pew  to  pew,  and  from  face  to  face,  so  that  each  listener, 
soon  or  later,  is  likely  to  feel  himself  addressed  and  individually 
pressed  upon  in  a  sort  of  thou-art-the-man  urgency.  If  you  look 
long  and  intently  into  the  face  of  a  person  asleep,  it  will  wake  him, 
it  is  said,  and  many  preachers  have  an  eye-power  that  makes  a  man 
feel  as  though  the  Judgment  Day  had  come  when  they  light  on  him  ; 
and  I  have  heard  ministers  say  that  they  could  actually  stir  up  a 
man  asleep,  and  clean  gone  away,  by  focusing  their  discourse  on 
him ; — not  in  any  personalties,  of  course,  but  in  a  stress  of  inten- 
tion. These  ministers  have  no  more  magnetism  and  galvanic  thrill 
than  you  or  I,  but  they  avail  themselves  of  the  oratorical  privilege 
of  taking  aim,  by  voice  and  by  eye,  and  silent,  imperious  volition. 
When  I  began  to  preach  I  did  not  know  this  ; — and  for  years  I  did  not 
know  it ; — and  at  times  I  even  prided  myself  on  the  fact,  (for  it 
was  a  fact),  that  I  could  speak  to  a  small  assembly  as  enthusiasti- 
cally as  I  could  to  a  larger  one,  because  I  drew  my  inspiration  from 
my  subject  and  not  from  men, — and  I  got  myself  into  a  miserable 
habit  of  not  seeing  the  faces  into  which  I  was  speaking ;  so  that  a 
person  might  sit  ten  feet  in  front  of  me  a  year  without  my  knowing 
he  was  there,  or  whether  he  was  a  man,  a  woman  or  a  child.  Now, 
that  is  a  great  loss  ; — a  loss  to  me,  and  a  loss  to  my  hearer ; — he 
might  almost  as  well  have  a  phonograph  speaking  to  him.  When 
croakers  say  that  preaching  is  dying  out,  and  that  the  printing  press 
is  going  to  take  its  place,  we  are  accustomed  to  reply ;  "  preaching 


YALE  LECTURES.  127 

never  can  die  out,  because  it  has  in  it  what  the  printed  page  never 
did,  or  can  have ; — namely,  the  personal  element,  man  dealing 
with  man,  soul  on  soul,  in  a  divine  inter-wrestling,  and  forty-fold 
mutuality,"  but  if  the  preacher  sees  nobody,  and  is  after  nobody  in 
particular,  nor  even  after  the  congregation  at  large,  that  boasted 
personal  element  is  gone  and  preaching  may  be  ousted  from  its 
function  at  last. 

I  have  confessed  my  own  sins  pretty  freely,  but  of  course  you 
will  not  understand  me  to  say  that  I  take  no  aim.  I  do ;  but  A, 
B  and  C  would  certainly  feel,  each  one,  the  shock  of  me  more,  if 
he  more  felt  the  seizure  of  my  individualizing  eye,  and  the  occa- 
sional jerk  of  my  will  grappled  on  him  ; — instead  of  being  compelled 
to  content  himself  with  the  general  roar  of  my  subject  only.  It 
may  be  a  sublime  roar,  but  it  tends  to  make  my  speech  seem 
longer  than  it  is. 

Close  along  side  of  this  is  the  failure  we  make,  when  our 
themes,  and  our  way  of  handling  them,  and  our  diction,  are  faraway 
from  the  customary  thinking  and  the  daily  life  of  the  mass.  Put  a 
young  man  to  school  from  his  youth,  let  college  have  him  four 
years,  and  the  professional  curriculum  as  many,  and  then  let  him  go 
out  to  address  human  beings ;  and  what  can  be  expected  of  him  at 
first,  but  more  or  less  separateness  from  the  people ; — who,  nine 
tenths  of  them,  have  had  no  full  education,  but  have  had  the  drill 
of  concrete  labor,  and  the  powerful  school-mastering  of  joy  and 
sorrow ; — sorrows  deep  as  the  grave,  and  joys  high  as  heaven.  Ex- 
actly how  much  good  does  it  do,  to  take  a  whole  Sunday  morning 
demonstrating  to  such,  the  freedom  of  the  will,  or  the  precise  sub- 
jective contents  of  a  man  going  through  this  and  that  important 
experience? — especially  if  you  use  a  metaphysical  and  scholastic 
terminology,  or  a  theologic  terminology  brought  down  from  some 
eminently  respectable  but  remote  antiquity.  A  year  ago,  I  delivered  a 
discourse  against  the  naturalistic  school  of  thinkers,  on  a  certain  point ; 
and  I  wished  to  turn  on  them  one  of  their  own  guns  ; — the  doctrine 
namely,  of  the  relativity  of  knowledge.  So  I  defined  that  doctrine 
— and  defined  it  well ;  I  have  looked  back  since  to  see  ;  well,  I  say ; 
that  is,  with  absolute  clearness  and  terms  that  had  color  in  them, 
they  not  being  blanched  in  the  round  and  round  of  long  metaphys- 
ical use.  I  was  much  pleased  with  the  definition.  After  church 
I  met  one  of  the  brightest  women  in  my  assembly,  who  had  been 
really  edified  she  said,  and  intellectually  stirred  up  by  what  I  had 


128  YALE  LECTURES. 

preached ;  and  I  ventured  to  see  where  that  definition  had  hit  her. 
"  I  listened  to  that  (said  she)  with  all  my  might,  but  when  you  had 
finished,  I  felt  the  wish  that  you  would  begin  and  go  right  over  it 
again."  So  she  was  hit,  and  I  had  a  victory  in  that  she  now  wanted  to 
know  what  the  relativity  of  knowledge  is,  (she  never  did  before)  ; 
but  for  the  present,  she  was  just  dazed.  I  am  not  quite  prepared 
to  say  I  am  sorry  I  went  into  that  business  of  defining ;  it  seems  too 
bad  to  think  of  that  labor  as  lost ; — still,  it  may  answer  to  illustrate, 
in  a  general  and  inexact  manner,  the  way  we  educated,  philosophi- 
cal and  bookish  preachers  have  (and  we  all  tend  to  be  so) 
of  climbing  up  on  to  our  seven-storied  topics,  and  from  that  awful 
height  raining  down  our  grandiloquent  rhetoric  on  the  parched 
ground  beneath  ; — the  parched  ground  looks  up  in  a  reverential  and 
stunned  way,  and  sometimes  feels  as  though  it  were  being  really  wet 
down,  and  then  again  does  not  know  whether  it  be  so  or  not,  like  that 
confused  and  wondering  woman  whom  I  named. 

A  sermon  let  fall  from  that  height  and  in  that  disguise  seems  long. 

And  I  know  no  way  to  avoid  such,  and  get  close  to  men,  but 
by  going  among  men  a  great  deal,  and  learning  to  love  them  man 
by  man,  as  the  redeemed  of  God  committed  to  your  care,  and  on 
their  way  to  the  eventualities  eternal,  along  a  path  burdensome  and 
full  of  ambushes.  When  a  preacher  comes  to  feel  that  his  subjects 
in  the  pulpit  are  the  select  packages  of  a  divine  dispensary,  pro- 
vided for  the  sick  and  sorrowful,  and  the  weak,  he  will  be  the  most 
practical  of  mortals,  and  church-going  in  his  congregation,  will 
seem  to  mean  business  every  Sunday.  I  was  greatly  instructed  by 
a  speech  I  delivered  once  to  a  full  assembly  of  sailors  in  the  city  of 
New  York.  It  was  the  anniversary  of  their  temperance  society,  and 
I  was  the  orator  of  the  occasion.  I  wrote  what  I  had  to  say,  but 
kept  the  manuscript  in  my  pocket.  And  I  humbly  judged  that  I 
had  adjusted  myself  to  the  occasion, — to  a  good  degree.  They 
listened  to  me  in  entire  silence  and  with  perfect  respect.  I  presume 
they  were  impressed.  But  when  I  closed,  the  presiding  minister, 
who  knew  what  he  was  about,  called  up  a  thick-set  sailor-man  for  a 
ten  minutes  talk ;  and  then  they  were  impressed  beyond  bounds, 
and  beyond  all  the  proprieties  of  silence.  I  felt  my  superiority 
even  yet,  in  respect  of  brains,  and  culture,  and  the  power  to  write 
a  good-looking  manuscript ;  so  that  I  did  not  propose  to  exchange 
with  him  and  be  he,  but  I  would  like  to  know  for  all  time  the 
straight  cut  to  men's  minds,  hearts  and  wills. 


YALE  LECTURES.  129 

I  think  we  may  count  on  the  blessed  Spirit  of  God  to  assist  us 
in  this,  provided  we  open  ourselves  to  him,  and  never  consent  to  go 
into  our  sermoning  and  our  preaching  without  seeking  him. 
Preaching  is  not  lecturing,  but  is  differenced  from  that  by  several 
marks,  and  by  none  more  distinctly  than  by  this  :  that  if  it  is  indeed 
preaching,  in  preaching's  full  idea,  it  is  speaking  in  the  impulse  and 
the  light  of  the  Holy  Ghost.  I  do  not  think  that  sermons  of  the 
Holy  Ghost  are  likely  to  seem  long ;  partly  because  their  topics  are 
divinely  given  to  us,  partly  because  our  style  in  them  is  divinely 
chastened  and  brought  near  to  the  people  whom  we  are  inwardly 
moved  to  try  to  bless  ;  partly  because  nothing  makes  the  mind  of 
the  preacher  fruitful,  versatile  and  unmonotonous,  like  the  Holy 
Ghost,  so  that  we  can  stand  the  strain  of  years  and  years,  minister- 
ing to  the  same  congregation  without  tiring  them ;  and  partly 
because,  when  that  Spirit  of  God  has  done  all  these  things  for  the 
preacher,  he  is  sure  to  go  into  the  minds  of  the  people  also,  to  make 
them  interested  and  receptive.  I  gave  a  sermon  on  Effectual 
Prayer,  which  certain  clerical  men  declared  to  me  was  the  best 
argument  on  that  subject  they  ever  heard.  Well  now,  there  was  no 
argument  in  it.  It  was  just  a  statement  of  my  opinions,  and  it  was 
written  on  Saturday  morning  and  in  the  play  of  my  customary 
intellect  merely.  But  I  never  in  my  life  was  more  authentically 
moved  from  on  high  than  in  that  sermon,  and  my  opinions  were 
mine  as  given  to  me,  and  I  spoke  by  authority ;  I  and  my  sermon 
were  instruments  of  the  Holy  Spirit ;  and  I  knew  that  we  were,  at 
the  time,  and  what  those  people  called  a  great  argument  was  a 
common-place  argument  made  great  by  supernatural  interfusions  in 
both  them  and  it. 

Every  minister  has  these  experiences.  And  he  needs  them. 
Why  !  if  you  are  but  a  lecturer  in  the  pulpit  you  are  in  competition 
with  first-class  strong  men  who  spend  a  life-time  perfecting  them- 
selves in  some  speciality,  and  then  consume  a  month  (perhaps 
months)  in  preparing  a  single  lecture.  And  then,  there  are  printed 
essays,  and  monographs,  and  elaborate,  powerful  volumes  which 
discuss  all  conceivable  subjects ;  and  the  people  who  listen  to  you 
read  them  ;  and  your  lecturing  they  insensibly  gauge  by  those  high 
standards  with  which  they  are  so  familiar ;  and  there,  O  man,  you 
are,  condemned  to  speak  at  least  twice  a  week,  in  an  intellectual 
race  with  these  athletes.  I  tell  you,  you  cannot  do  it.  Your 
genius  may  be  great,  and  your  industry  gigantic,  but  you  cannot  do 


130  YALE  LECTURES. 

it.  You  must  come  into  the  secret  of  small  discourses  made  mighty 
by  the  mighty  God  in  them. 

And  made  reasonably  short,  too.  For,  while  God  the  Spirit  in 
a  man  makes  him  to  be  fertile  of  thoughts,  and  gloriously  commu- 
nicative, so  that  you  might  naturally  say : — "  He  will  speak  for 
hours," — behold  !  he  does  not.  That  same  Spirit  that  starts  him, 
stops  him ; — precisely  as  in  Nature — in  the  whole  circuit  of  living 
things — God  observes  bounds  ; — a  tree  is  only  so  high  ;  you  can  see 
the  top  of  it — there  is  vitality  enough  in  it  to  push  up  a  mile, 
but  it  rounds  out  its  idea  and  stops ;  and  an  animal  is  so  long ; 
and  a  summer  is  so  many  months,  and  no  more ; — and  it  lies  in  the 
very  idea  of  a  living  organism  that  it  is  definitely  circumscribed, 
and  not  boundless.  And  a  sermon  God-given  and  God-wrought 
is  an  organism  and  has  sensible  limits.  In  fact,  I  imagine  that  a 
whole  course  of  lectures,  which  should  discuss  every  feature  of  good 
sermons,  might  be  made  by  simply  unfolding  that  one  idea — The 
Sermon  a  living  Organism. 

I  will  spend  the  few  moments  that  now  remain  in  giving  three 
rules  for  shortening  sermons.  Virtually,  I  have  been  giving  rules  all 
along,  but  I  have  three  more. 

And  first.  One  way  to  make  a  short  sermon  is  to  stop.  That 
is  a  second-grade,  and  mechanical  way,  though — and  I  do  not  think 
much  of  it.  Live  things  ought  to  stop,  for  the  good  and  respectable 
reason  that  they  have  reached  their  term ;  and  they  ought  not  to 
stop  before  that.  If  they  do,  it  is  a  case  of  stunting.  However,  if 
your  sermon  cannot  be  stopped  in  any  other  way,  you  must  stunt  it. 
Strike  it  by  lightning.  Put  a  worm  to  the  root  of  it.  Any  way  to 
get  it  stopped.  If  it  is  a  sermon  that  has  been  carpentered  together 
a  mechanical  way  of  stopping  is  as  good  as  any  other. 

But,  secondly,  a  good  way  to  get  brevity  is  to  choose  just  one 
thought,  and  resolve  that  when  you  have  opened  that  one,  in  a  fair 
practical  statement  of  it,  you  will  pull  up.  Do  not  take  one  of 
those  vast  and  infinitely  plural  thoughts,  like  the  love  of  God,  but 
a  little  one — a  very  little  one,  because,  the  minute  you  begin  to  look 
at  it,  it  will  swell.  Years  ago,  I  read  that  at  the  Massachusetts  Ag- 
ricultural College  in  Amherst,  they  had  put  an  iron  harness  on  a 
squash  and  hitched  it  to  a  certain  mechanism  by  which  they  could 
tell  how  much  the  squash  would  lift  by  the  expansive  force  of  its 
growth — and  it  lifted  several  thousand  pounds.  It  was  bound  to 
grow.     So  an  idea,  diligently  considered,  tends  to  grow  and  cannot 


YALE  LECTURES.  131 

be  repressed.  You  plant  it  in  a  pint  pot  and  think  that  is  enough, 
but  it  is  not.  So  you  must  be  careful  to  get  a  thought  little  enough, 
else  you  will  have  a  sermon  too  enormous  for  anything.  Or  if  you 
take  one  of  the  vast  thoughts,  take  only  one  aspect  of  it,  and  work 
that.  Aim  at  twenty  to  twenty-five  minutes  ; — and  then,  all  the  first 
minutes,  push  on  through  your  material  rapidly — use  it  up  fast — so 
that  when  you  come  to  the  last  half  of  your  discourse  you  may  be 
sure  of  spinning  out  to  your  goal,  in  somewhere  near  your  predeter- 
mined time.  Most  of  the  half  hour  sermons  I  ever  wrote  were  started 
for  about  twenty  minutes,  and  grew  the  other  ten  minutes  by  the  irre- 
sistible dilation  of  life.  I  fashioned  them  for  the  time  mentioned, 
by  selecting  an  apparent  mustard-seed  of  a  topic,  and  then,  when 
it  began  to  get  big,  throwing  out  half  the  things  I  might  say  on  it. 

This  leads  me  to  my  last  rule — or  word  of  caution.  Do  not 
think  you  must  put  in  to  your  sermon  everything  that  belongs  to  the 
theme  you  are  on,  and  all  you  can  think  of; — nor  even  all  the  im- 
portant things.  You  will  speak  again  on  that  subject  some  day. 
You  are  a  settled  minister  probably — which,  in  this  nineteenth  cen- 
tury, is  a  sarcastical  term,  meaning  a  few  years.  But  you  will  stay  a  few 
years.  And  some  day  you  will  come  up  to  that  theme  from  a  dif- 
ferent direction,  and  then  you  will  work  in  the  material  that  you 
discarded  on  that  first  occasion.  I  often  keep  my  redundant  mem- , 
oranda  against  such  a  day  as  that.  Consider  too,  that  your  people 
have  no  sense  of  loss  when  you  incorporate  in  your  discourse  only  a 
part  of  the  ore  you  had  dug  out.  You  have  a  large  and  full-toned 
conception  of  what  your  sermon  ought  to  be,  because  you  have  care- 
fully looked  into  the  topic,  and  discovered  the  magnitude  and  multi- 
tude of  its  points ;  but  the  only  conception  of  the  topic  which  your 
congregation  have,  is  that  which  you  give  them  in  that  sermon  which 
seems  to  you  so  disemboweled,  for  brevity's  sake.  It  is  not  disem- 
boweled, to  them.  No  one  has  any  sense  of  loss  when  he  does  not 
know  that  he  has  lost  anything.  I  have  missed  hundreds  of  things 
in  life  which  I  might  have  had,  and  it  was  necessary  to  the  ideal 
fullness  of  my  life  that  they  should  come  into  it ;  but  my  life  seems 
now  about  as  full  as  I  can  stand,  and,  not  having  heard  generally 
what  those  things  are  which  have  escaped  me,  I  do  not  pine. 
Neither  do  your  listeners  pine,  O  preacher,  for  anything  you  left 
out — not  ordinarily.     We  torment  ourselves  too  much  at  this  point. 

Consider  also  that  a  genuine  sermon,  though  it  be  but  twenty 
minutes  long,  has  in  it  all  the  essential  juices  of  the  subject  which  it 


132  YALE  LECTURES. 

expounds.  Tap  one  sugar  maple,  and  you  have  the  entire  secret  of 
maple  sap.  You  do  not  need  to  drink  the  whole  grove  dry,  nor 
even  the  one  tree. 

The  truly  divine  subjects  that  belong  in  sermons,  do  all  curi- 
ously cohere,  one  with  another,  and  are  nourished  by  the  same  essen- 
tial circulation.  Let  a  real  preacher  preach  on  election,  and  his 
people  will  have  a  cup  from  the  Gospel  spring.  Let  him  preach  on 
Hell,  and  they  will  taste  the  same  waters.  And  if  that  is  so,  much 
more  plainly  is  it  true  that  any  one  theme,  fragmentarily  stated, 
because  there  is  not  time  to  state  it  entirely,  will  have  the  authentic 
taste  of  the  whole  great  theme.  I  continually  increase  in  my  sense 
of  the  sufficiency  of  brief  statements  in  the  pulpit,  so  that  they  be 
direct,  swift-moving,  out  of  the  warm  interiors  of  the  subject  in 
hand,  and  not  from  its  outskirts ;  and,  further,  contagious  with  the 
personal  energy  of  a  man  who  is  in  his  subject,  and  has  his  subject 
in  him,  by  good  study  of  it,  by  the  Holy  Ghost,  and  by  an  experi- 
ence which  makes  him  absolutely  know  what  he  is  talking  about. 

I  am  speaking,  you  will  understand,  of  the  preaching  which  we 
are  called  to  give  our  people,  Sunday  by  Sunday,  and  year  by  year. 
Sometimes  we  are  called  to  open  matters  to  the  bottom  sands,  and 
from  shore  to  shore,  as  where  St.  Paul  preached  all  night,  or  where 
Jesus  prolonged  his  last  passover  utterance  till  the  moon,  the  dear 
Paschal  moon,  was  far  on  in  the  sky,  and  the  night  well  spent. 
When  the  occasion  demands  it,  or  even  when  our  own  divine  irre- 
pressibility  demands  it,  we  will  not  fear  a  long  pull ;  some  may  not 
be  willing  to  listen  (one  man  fell  asleep  when  Paul  preached  that 
time),  but  others  some  will  listen,  as  being  able  to  see  the  move- 
ment of  God  in  us,  and  the  glory  of  his  message  through  us. 

Gentlemen,  to-day  for  the  first  time,  I  have  spoken  to  you  less 
than  an  hour,  and  I  am  therefore  a  beautiful  illustration  of  my  own 
subject. 


EXTRA-PARISHIONAL 
FAITHFULNESS. 


I  wish  I  might  give  to  the  young  men  present  something  of  my 
own  sense  of  the  importance  to  them,  to  the  churches  of  which  they 
may  be  pastors,  to  the  denomination  in  which  they  may  stand,  and  to 
the  general  cause  of  Christ,  that  they  each  one  attend,  faithfully  and 
cordially,  the  rather  numerous  convocations,  conferences,  associa- 
tions, consociations,  ministers'  meetings,  councils,  and  general  coun- 
cils, to  which  they  will  find  themselves  related,  as  they  pass  on  in 
their  ministry.  Time  was  when  I  should  have  been  a  very  unsuita- 
ble lecturer  to  you  on  this  subject,  because  I  did  not  appreciate 
these  extra-parishional  obligations  and  privileges,  and  sinned  against 
them  with  a  high  hand  and  an  outstretched  arm — doing  it  deliber- 
ately, and  because  my  ideas  about  such  things  were  wrong.  But, 
now,  I  do  so  plainly  see  that  they  were  wrong,  and  have  been  so 
ashamed  of  them  for  a  good  while,  that  I  consider  myself  to  have 
great  qualifications  for  speaking  to  you,  and  exhorting  you,  and  giv- 
ing you  a  right  trend,  here  at  the  start  of  your  clerical  career. 

Now  why  did  I,  when  I  started,  eschew  these  wholesome 
assemblies  ?  If  I  say,  I  did  it  because  I  was  a  fool,  that  would  be 
the  truth,  but  not  the  whole  truth.  I  was  shy.  I  dreaded  to  meet 
men  and  exchange  opinions  with  them.  Shy,  I  say.  Shy  about 
everything  in  fact.  When  Dr.  Fitch  resigned  the  pastorate  of  Yale 
College,  and  the  next  Alumni  meeting  was  considering  that  notable 
event,  I  heard  one  of  the  speakers  say  : — "  It  was  once  asked  how  in 
the  world  a  man  so  scandalously  timid  as  the  doctor,  ever  raised  cour- 
age to  accept  such  a  position  as  that ;  and  the  reply  was,  because 
he  was  too  timid  to  reject  it."     Well,  I  understood  that  remark. 


134  YALE  LECTURES. 

And,  young  gentlemen,  perhaps  I  had  better  drop  in  a  parenthesis 
here,  and  tell  you,  out  of  my  own  experience,  that  the  fear  of  man 
can  be  considerably  outgrown  by  ministers.  What  you  are  compelled 
to  do,  you  can  do — and  keep  doing,  and  gradually  men  and  assem- 
blies are  not  so  clothed  with  terrors  as  they  used  to  be — that  is, 
provided  you  have  a  sufficiently  obstinate  will,  and  also  a  physique 
that  does  not  miserably  give  way  under  you  when  you  lay  a  strain 
on  it.  The  legs  of  a  certain  marshal  of  Napoleon  the  Great, 
always  trembled  on  the  edge  of  battle  in  the  most  unedifying  manner^ 
we  are  told  ;  but  he  never  paid  any  attention  to  them,  he  said. 
"He  gave  them  their  own  sweet  way,  and  while  they  trembled  he 
fought."  Not  all  legs  of  men  will  stand  such  treatment  as  that,  but 
most  will,  if  they  are  edged  along  and  humored  a  little.  A  friend 
and  relative  of  mine,  facing  his  first  considerable  assembly,  became 
blind  and  felt  his  neck  shortening  down  to  his  shoulders,  and  had 
to  be  led  off  and  never  became  an  orator ;  but  ministers  are  not 
out  before  assemblies  on  business  of  their  own,  they  being  divine 
ambassadors ;  and  that  sense  of  mission  would  keep  the  tiniest 
boat,  head  on  to  any  gale.  Moreover,  it  is  a  curious  fact  that  often 
a  soul,  constitutionally  timorous  in  the  presence  of  the  private  man, 
loses  all  that  when  those  private  persons  are  massed  before  him  a 
thousand  strong  to  be  addressed.  The  speaker  seems  to  pass  out 
then  into  the  grandeur  of  impersonal  considerations,  and  in  the 
enthusiasm  of  them  he  is  sublimed  and  fear  has  no  hold  on  him. 

Thus  much  on  ministerial  courage,  my  young  and  apprehen- 
sive brothers. 

I  abjured  convocations  for  fear's  sake,  I  was  saying.  Also  I 
abjured  clerical  bodies,  because  I  did  not  rightly  esteem  ministers. 
I  had  somehow  picked  up  that  precious  piece  of  misunderstanding 
and  practical  slander,  which  has  latterly  had  some  special  ventila- 
tion in  the  public  prints ;  the  notion  that  preachers,  as  a  class,  do 
not  frankly  speak  their  minds  on  the  great  matters  of  doctrine  and 
religion,  but  put  themselves  before  the  public  as  more  all-believing 
persons  than  they  really  are ;  declaring,  oftimes,  what  they  are 
expected  to  declare,  or  think  they  ought  to  declare,  rather  than 
exactly  what  they  are  able  to  see  and  rest  in,  and  live  for,  and  stake 
their  eternity  on. 

Well,  beloved,  I  have  come  out  of  that,  and  I  wish  you  would 
take  my  word  for  it,  that  ministers  are  no  such  second-class  and 
time-serving  men  of  God  as  such  talk  implies.     My  discovery  in 


YALE  LECTURES.  135 

regard  to  them  is,  that  while  they  are  earthern  vessels,  and  had  bet- 
ter be — so  long  as  they  are  ministers — even  as  the  Eternal  Son  of 
God,  when  he  would  serve  men,  took  on  himself  their  nature,  and 
many  of  its  infirmities — nevertheless  those  earthen  vessels  are  not 
so  earthern  as  to  be  good  for  nothing ;  but  are  of  the  better  sort, 
decidedly.  They  are  honest.  They  are  frank — just  as  frank  as 
honesty  requires.  They  are  magnanimous.  They  are  brotherly — 
with  each  other,  and  with  all  men.  They  are  truth-seekers  and 
lovers.  They  are  intelligent  and  candid.  They  are  clean  in  their 
lives.  They  are  gentlemanly.  They  are  conversational  and  agreea- 
ble. They  show  well  in  emergencies,  and  are  able  to  be  martyrs. 
They  are  well-informed.  They  are  fitted  for  the  leaderships  of  all 
sorts  to  which  they  are  called.  I  will  not  be  choked  down  by  any 
modesty  in  this  matter.  Neither  in  this  lecture  will  I  be  choked, 
nor  in  conventions  of  lawyers,  or  physicians,  or  merchants,  or 
women,  or  anybody  else  ; — we  have  no  need  to  fear  any  of  them, 
and,  my  brother,  if  ever  you  fall  to  thinking  of  your  own  demerits, 
and  your  own  insignificance,  and  get  so  shame-faced  that  you  are 
tempted  to  make  a  slack  testimony  for  your  order  before  a  wicked 
and  gainsaying  world,  do  you  impute  to  yourself  the  merits  of  the 
better  members  of  the  order,  long  enough  to  deliver  a  rousing  tes- 
timony. For  the  men  in  question  deserve  it, — visibly  they  do  ; 
and  then,  if  they  be  looked  into  historically — that  is,  along  all  the 
nobler  lines  of  history,  it  will  be  found  that  society  and  govern- 
ment, and  all  welfares,  have  been  as  much  indebted  to  them  as  to 
any  one. 

After  this  preliminary  skirmish  of  mine,  you  are  prepared,  I 
hope,  to  go  on  with  me,  while  I  draw  out  in  form,  some  of  the  rea- 
sons why  you  should  be  very  duty-full  towards  church  and  clerical 
assemblies.  You  will  notice  that  I  speak  as  a  Congregational  min- 
ister, considerably,  as  I  reasonably  may  before  a  body  of  men,  the 
most  of  whom  are  likely  to  serve  in  the  Congregational  field.  The 
principles,  however,  which  I  lay  down,  apply  equally  well  to  all 
Christian  communions. 

First,  then,  observe  ;  if  Congregationalism — as  distinguished 
from  Independency — is  to  exist,  it  must  be  by  denominational  con- 
vocations ;  these  are  the  forms  and  the  means  of  corporate  life  and, 
if  they  are  kept  up,  somebody  must  keep  them  up  ;  and  if  some- 
body must,  why  not  you,  A,  B,  and  C  ?  It  is  as  much  your  business 
as  it  is  mine.     On  the  question  whether  Congregationalism  ought  to 


136  YALE  LECTURES. 

exist,  I  will  not  argue.  Independency  is  impracticable,  in  regard 
of  the  great  ends  of  Christian  propagandism  ;  and,  in  the  last  analy- 
sis, it  is  contrary  to  the  Christian  Spirit.  When  I  was  remarking  on 
my  own  aversion  to  convictions  originally,  I  forgot  to  say,  that  I  had 
nursed  myself  along  into  the  solitariness  and  repellancy  of  Indi- 
vidualism. I  thought  a  man's  religion  and  his  religious  opinions 
were  a  matter  between  himself  and  his  God,  and  did  not  admit  of 
intermeddlers.  I  even  declined  church  membership  for  a  time, 
being  afraid  that  the  clear  lines  of  my  own  personality  might  get 
confused,  and  I  suffer  some  mergence  in  other  people  if  I  joined 
myself  to  anything.  You  will  detect  the  kernel  of  truth  in  my  posi- 
tion ;  a  man  must  maintain  himself  an  unmistakable  integer ;  cohe- 
rence and  cohesion,  and  the  agglutinous  instinct  may  be  carried 
clear  to  the  point  of  self-loss ; — and  local  churches  may  agglutinate 
inordinately,  and  bring  up  in  an  impersonal  corporeity,  national, 
provincial  or  other;  and  yet  Individualism,  pure  and  simple,  is 
indefensible  abstractly,  and  when  it  is  brought  to  the  proof  of 
experiment,  it  shows  itself  the  quintessence  and  first  principle  of 
disorganization  and  anarchy. 

We  must  get  together,  then,  in  many  kinds  of  assemblies. 
There  must  be  councils,  conferences,  associations,  synods,  general 
conventions,  and  the  like.  These  various  congresses  have  duties  to 
perform,  that  are  indispensable  to  the  general  life.  Duties  to  per- 
form. Young  men  who  surmise  that  they  are  right  for  ministers, 
must  be  inspected  unto  the  uttermost.  Churches  which  surmise 
that  they  have  hit  on  a  right  minister  for  themselves,  must  be 
advised ; — sometimes  that  they  have,  and  sometimes  that  they  have 
not ;  and  sometimes  that  they  both  have  and  have  not.  Disorder- 
liness  must  be  advised.  Heterodoxy  must  be  labored  with  and 
voted  on.  Great  questions  of  morals  must  have  a  more  than  indi- 
vidual yea  or  nay  pronounced  on  them.  Ecclesiastical  precedents 
must  be  made.  Many  things  must  be  thrown  into  the  mill  of  a 
national  handling,  in  general  assemblies,  in  order  that  what  is  wide- 
afloat  in  single  minds  may  get  formulated  in  a  formulation  of  size 
enough  to  be  visible  and  ponderous  ; — it  is  astonishing  to  what  a 
ripeness  the  general  mind  may  come  by  the  separate  and  scattered 
gestations  of  large  numbers  of  private  minds ;  and  yet  have  no  con- 
sciousness of  it  until  some  general  body  meets  and  makes  a  deliver- 
ance. It  is  like  an  orchard  which  is  red-ripe,  all  through,  but  needs 
a  good  general  wind  to  shake  it  down  and  make  all  beholders  see 


YALE  LECTURES.  137 

that  the  day  of  completeness  has  come.  By  these  means  Individ- 
ualism is  Christianized  into  Catholicism,  self-consciousness  into  con- 
sciousness corporate,  localism  into  universalism,  bush-fighting  into 
regiments,  brigades,  and  divisions,  preaching  alone,  into  a  conscious 
voicing  of  the  whole  church  of  God,  creed-saying,  a  ripple  here  and 
a  splash  there,  into  the  sound  of  many  waters,  and  the  august  em- 
phasis of  all  generations. 

Go  to  the  councils  then,  and  the  meetings,  and  the  regular  con- 
ventions, and  whatever  else  may  be  provided  for  you  to  take  a  hand 
in.  Councils  get  joked  in  these  days  as  self-conceited  and  pom- 
pous futilities,  but  these  jokers  know  not  what  they  say.  It  does 
expand  a  man's  self-consciousness  to  be  a  councilman,  and  he  may 
even  go  so  far  as  pomposity  in  certain  cases ;  but  as  to  these  bodies 
being  futilities,  that  is  not  so.  In  the  Roman  communion,  certainly, 
they  are  not ;  and  even  in  a  communion  so  intensely  individualis- 
tic as  the  Congregational,  councils  are  yet  capable  of  making  a 
good  deal  of  trouble,  for  those  that  deserve  it,  and  much  good  for 
those  who  deserve  that ; — as  you  will  find  if  you  go  to  all  you  are 
ever  called  to.  Go  to  them,  I  say,  once  more.  Do  your  duty  ■ — 
your  denominational  duty,  and  your  inter-denominational  duty, — 
and  your  international  duty,  if  you  should  ever  get  appointed 
Christ's  delegate  to  other  lands.  And  your  own  people  must  let 
you  spread  out  on  these.  They  will  be  wanting  a  council  themselves 
some  day.  And  if  the  principle  of  shirking  gets  shed  abroad  among 
ministers,  how  will  councils  and  the  rest  be  made  up  ? 

My  second  reason  for  faithfulness  to  your  corporate  obligations, 
is,  that  if  you  decline  them,  and  just  converge  yourself  upon  your 
parish  work,  and  there  stick  year  after  year,  it  narrows  you,  both  your 
views,  and  your  feelings.  It  may  make  you  conceited  as  to  "  your 
parish,"  "your  congregation,"  "  your  people,"  "your  pulpit,'  "and 
your  Sunday  school,"  or  it  may,  on  the  other  hand,  weaken  your 
hopefulness  and  your  courage,  and  slacken  the  energy  of  your 
stroke.  I  judge  that  this  localization  of  one's  self,  works  in  the 
direction  of  conceit  as  often  as  any  way,  I  thought  of  that  while 
conversing  with  a  Protestant  Episcopal  clergyman,  all  worn  out 
because  he  did  not  dare  leave  his  pulpit  for  a  moment  (he  said) 
lest  some  ministerial  brother  coming  in  there  might,  in  a  single 
sermon,  wipe  out  his  months  of  careful  labor  on  a  class  which  he  was 
preparing  for  confirmation.  Perhaps  your  first  impulse  on  hearing 
such  talk  as  that  is  to  admire  the  man's  devotion.  Certainly 
10 


138  YALE  LECTURES. 

that  confirmation  class  was  well  followed  up,  and  I  presume  they 
were  nourished  on  substantial  truths ; — but  one's  second  thought 
is,  that  they  were  followed  and  nourished  by  a  man  so  intensely 
specialized  as  to  have  lost  his  breadth,  and  his  bigness ; — and 
always  in  teaching,  the  teacher  is  quite  as  much  as  his  doctrine. 
He  was  not  so  important  to  that  class  as  he  thought.  Thousands  of 
clergymen  could  have  handled  them  as  well  as  he.  He  was  so 
much  of  a  parish  minister  that  he  was  nothing  else.  He  had  so  few 
outings  that  he  misestimated  his  ministerial  brethren.  He  did  not 
know  the  kind  of  sermons  they  were  preaching.  He  mismeasured 
the  importance  of  that  class  of  his.  It  was  very  important,  but 
there  are  such  classes  without  number  all  over  the  world  ;  and  there 
are  other  congregations,  all  about,  and  while  the  particular  must  not 
be  undervalued,  the  general  is  surely  more  than  the  particular  ; — 
and  no  man  can  make  any  just  judgment  on  anything,  unless  he  is 
conversant  with  generals.  Moreover,  while  a  home-staying,  and 
home-laboring  minister,  runs  a  risk  of  being  thus  made  small  and 
full  of  a  puffy  estimate  of  his  own  services,  his  congregation,  on 
their  part,  may  suffer  in  the  same  way.  If  their  minister  circulated 
widely,  in  the  various  assemblies  of  his  denomination,  and  of  other 
denominations,  he  would  bring  in  wafts  from  those  outlying  regions  ; 
bits  of  information,  movements  of  sympathy,  intelligent  judgments 
of  his  own,  founded  on  this  wide  survey  of  his  ; — and  by  all  this, 
that  particular  people,  while  remaining  sensible  of  themselves,  would 
be  made  sensible  of  the  rest  of  the  creation  ;  would  like  to  hear 
other  ministers,  and  would  run  the  risk  of  ruining  a  confirmation 
class ;  would  consider  that  a  religious  service  was  not  spoiled  if 
their  minister  was  absent  for  once ;  and,  speaking  generally,  would 
get  a  valid  gauge  on  their  own  selves  and  their  own  labors,  and 
affairs.  But  their  minister  declines  to  circulate,  does  not  feel  the 
need  of  a  wide  contact  with  Christendom  through  its  many  charac- 
teristic assemblies,  thinks  it  takes  too  much  time  to  attend  to  these 
things,  and  that  his  local  duties  are  all  he  can  carry ; — so,  while  he 
is  circumscribed  and  belittled,  and  at  the  same  time  is  dilated  in 
self-importance,  they  run  into  the  same  infirmities. 

I  want  to  speak  a  word  concerning  the  enheartenment  which 
one  may  get  by  an  extended  familiarity  with  Zion  at  large.  One 
Monday  morning  in  1872,  I  boarded  a  train  bound  from  London  to 
Liverpool  to  take  ship  for  home,  and  I  found  myself  facing  an  old 
man,  who  proved  to  be  a  clergyman  and  an  American.    Were  you  in 


YALE  LECTURES.  139 

London,  yesterday?  said  I.  Yes.  And  where  did  you  attend 
church  ?  At  Mr.  Spurgeon's.  Did  you  hear  that  sermon  of  his  in 
the  morning,  from  the  text :  "  He  is  a  root  out  of  a  dry  ground." 
Yes.  And  what  did  you  think  of  it?  Thereupon  he  was  so  filled 
with  emotion  that  he  could  not  reply.  But  his  wife  took  it  up,  and 
said  : — We  cried  all  the  way  through  it.  And  why  did  you  cry  ? 
said  I.  Then  it  came  out,  at  last,  that  he  had  been  a  missionary  in 
Turkey  all  his  life,  and  to  come  up  now,  as  he  had  within  a  few 
days,  out  of  Turkish  surroundings,  and  all  the  depressions  thereof, 
where  there  is  not  one  Christian  to  a  hundred  square  miles,  and  get 
into  that  immense  assembly  with  its  immense  unity  in  the  Holy 
Ghost,  and  hear  them  singing  in  a  great  swing  like  the  final  hallelu- 
jahs of  the  redeemed ;  and  then  to  hear  that  truly  wonderful  dis- 
course (and  I  think  it  was  wonderful,  and  I  shall  never  lose  the 
sound  of  it),  in  which,  point  after  point,  it  was  shown  wherein 
Christ  was  a  root  out  of  dry  ground,  but  was  also  shown  how  this 
unpromising  One  had  made  his  victories,  and  was  on  his  way  to  a 
kingdom  that  shall  fill  the  whole  earth, — why  !  it  was  more  than 
the  old  man's  heart  could  endure  ; — he  overflowed — he  took  the 
occasion  up  imaginatively,  after  the  manner  of  high  feeling  always, 
and  made  it  signify  and  seem  the  ultimate  unity  of  man  in  the 
blessed  Jesus,  according  to  that  grand  sentence  of  St.  Paul  in  his 
Epistle  to  the  Ephesians,  the  first  chapter,  and  the  sixteenth  verse  : 
"  That  in  the  dispensation  of  the  fulness  of  times,  he  might  gather 
together  in  one  all  things  in  Christ,  both  which  are  in  heaven,  and 
which  are  on  earth,  even  in  Him."  In  the  seership  of  that  sen- 
tence, the  man  sat  and  wept,  while  the  great  service  went  on.  And 
I  myself  have  often  felt  a  similar  enlargement  and  a  similar  joy. 
Even  under  circumstances  so  disadvantageous  as  a  high  service  in 
St.  Peter's  at  Rome,  I  have  been  able  to  rise  into  a  sort  of  Millen- 
ial  feeling.  The  mighty  multitude,  made  up  of  all  lands  and  all 
nationalities,  and  all  ranks,  under  the  whole  heaven ;  the  jubilate  of 
choirs  reduplicated  through  the  echoing  great  spaces  of  the  cathe- 
dral, and  even  the  spectacular  elements  of  the  occasion,  were  woven 
together  into  a  vision,  I  found,  of  Christianity  universalized  and  tri- 
umphant, fulfilling  what  I  read  afterwards  on  the  base-stone  of  the 
Egyptian  obelisk  that  had  been  set  up  in  the  great  square  in  front 
of  the  church,  and  surmounted  by  a  cross,  namely  : — "  Behold  the 
cross  of  the  Lord — lo  !  the  Lion  of  the  tribe  of  Judah  has  con- 
quered."    Tugging  forever  in  my  own  parish,  looking  out  forever 


140  YALE  LECTURES. 

on  my  one  comparatively  little  congregation,  and  seeing  only  such 
minute  results  of  labor  as  are  possible  to  a  single  man  on  a  single 
spot,  my  sense  of  the  majesty  of  Christianity,  and  its  dominion, 
prospectively  as  well  as  to-day,  may  slip  away  from  me  a  little  ;  but 
when  I  walk  about  Zion  and  survey  her  towers  and  catch  the 
uplift  and  hosannah  of  her  masses,  multitudes,  and  millions,  I  am 
restored  to  the  largeness  that  belongs  to  me.  I  have  comprehen- 
sion and  vision.     I  have  insight  and  foresight  and  sight  all  around. 

It  is  not  every  day  we  can  get  into  these  ecumenical  and  vast 
meetings,  and  have  our  idea  of  what  Christendom  is,  and  what 
Christianity  means  thus  suddenly  enlarged,  and  made  transporting ; 
but  you  can  accomplish  something  of  the  same  sort  by  slow  degrees, 
in  frequenting  many  kinds  of  lesser  meetings.  In  a  gathering  of 
the  ministers  of  a  city,  on  Monday  morning,  with  an  inter-mixture 
of  Baptists,  Congregationalists,  Methodists,  and  about  everything 
you  can  think  of,  each  one  ready  to  make  an  argument  for  his  spe- 
cial Ism,  and  all  ready,  also,  to  flow  into  the  one  grand  current  of 
undenominational  thought,  the  occasion  works  beautifully  to  pull 
you  out  of  localism,  and  out  of  all  your  special  rages,  and  make 
you  a  sizable  and  round-a-bout  man.  I  attended  a  May  meeting  of 
the  Quakers  in  New  York,  years  ago,  and  came  away  with  a 
renewed  sense  of  several  things  whereof  my  own  parish  might  not 
have  reminded  me  in  forty  years.  I  attended  every  session  of  a 
Methodist  annual  conference  that  met  in  my  city  once,  and  had 
restored  to  me  considerably  the  days  of  my  youth,  when  I  was 
familiar  with  the  Methodistic  stride,  and  did  not  know  but  I  was 
myself  foreordained  to  that  movement  all  the  days  of  my  life.  It 
is  good  to  take  another  man's  gait  sometimes.  It  advises  you  that 
several  gaits  are  possible,  and  several  legitimate,  and  that  there  are 
several,  of  which  one  is  substantially  as  good  as  the  other.  A  friend 
of  mine  with  me  in  Europe,  accompanied  me  to  the  sen-ice  of  a 
certain  eccentric  communion  (as  he  would  call  it),  and  some  things 
done  by  them  seemed  very  amusing  and  ridiculous  to  him.  Well, 
they  were  not  amusing  and  they  were  not  ridiculous.  He  was 
stiff-jointed  by  a  life- long  tread-milling  in  Congregationalism,  and 
was  not  equal  to  the  versatile  movements  of  that  truly  beautiful  and 
very  plausible  ritual. 

It  does  a  man  good  even  to  exchange  pulpits,  once  in  a  while. 
He  sees  how  Israel  looks  in  all  kinds  of  costumes.  He  manifolds 
his  conception  of  church   edifices,  and  choirs  and  liturgies.     He 


YALE  LECTURES.  141 

learns  how  possible  it  is  to  preach  in  unprecedented  pulpits.  He 
comes  home  a  limberer  and  a  wiser  man,  and  walks  into  his  work 
again  with  a  certain  catholicity. 

Great  contact  with  Christians  in  your  own  body,  and  Chris- 
tians at  large,  is  a  rich  re-enforcement  of  your  doctrinal  feeling  also. 
The  divisions  of  Christendom  are  numerous,  but  the  concords  of 
Christendom  are  more.  I  do  not  know  that  they  are  more  numeri- 
cally, and  I  do  not  care.  You  cannot  measure  things  by  count. 
Lilliput  counts  one,  Caesar  counts  one  and  one  only.  The  true  meas- 
ures are  moral,  and  the  unanimity  of  the  Christian  world  on  the 
great  momenta  of  faith,  utterly  drowns  out  all  discords,  if  only  you 
have  an  ear  to  hear.  Standing  on  a  rocky  sea  coast,  the  shatter  of 
the  waves  might  fully  fill  your  ear ;  but  how  light  is  mere  shattering 
compared  to  that  one  grave,  and  immense  ocean-tone  which  eter- 
nally fills  the  whole  sky.  Thus  open  your  ear  to  the  tone  of  the 
ages,  as  with  unvarying  unanimity  they  speak  forth  the  great  facts 
and  formulations  of  our  faith,  and  all  lesser  sounds  are  silenced,  and 
you  feel  yourself  re-established  in  the  mighty  main  things.  And 
the  way  to  get  your  ear  open  is  to  attend'  assemblies.  I  have  often 
felt,  in  the  general  meetings  of  the  Christian  body  to  which  I 
belong,  that  I  wanted  the  assembled  brethren  to  stand  up  every  time 
in  some  grand  creed-saying,  in  which  they  could  all  agree  ;  some 
creed,  too,  in  which  the  general  church  always  has  agreed,  so  that 
voices  absent  might  be  added  to  voices  present,  and  the  innumer- 
able departed  might  strike  in  with  the  living — what  an  edification 
it  would  be  !  how  we  should  be  doctrinalized  afresh  !  for  we  are 
creatures  of  sense,  and  what  is  spoken  seems  authenticated  by  being 
spoken,  especially  if,  in  the  speaking,  all  redeemed  voices  combine. 

Again,  be  sure  to  frequent  all  legitimate  meetings,  for  nu- 
merous little  reasons,  such  as  the  following  :  It  is  something,  to 
put  your  eyes  on  the  men  of  celebrity,  and  the  good  men,  whom 
you  are  likely  to  meet  there.  It  is  a  fine  thing  for  young  men  to 
have  heroes — and  for  old  ones,  too — theological  heroes — heroes  of 
reform — men  of  great  and  admirable  learning— men  of  noble 
eloquence — men  of  great  endowments  of  magnetism.  The  advance 
of  years  tends  to  lessen  one's  heroes,  I  suppose ; — some  heroes 
it  quite  obliterates,  and  others  it  reduces ;  and  some  sad  and 
disagreeable  old  men  confess  that  they  have  no  admirations 
left — poor  old  creatures  !  I  say  to  you,  there  is  no  need  of 
these   wholesale    disenchantments.     I    am   old    enough    to   know, 


142  YALE  LECTURES. 

and  I  say  it.  I  do  not  know  how  many  men  there  are  whom 
I  would  go  thousands  of  miles  to  see  and  hear,  and  feel  the  touch  of 
their  vigor.  I  see  their  limitations,  but  I  see  also  where  they  round 
out  towards  the  infinite.  They  represent  to  me  the  better  forms  of 
strength,  and  the  better  forms  of  virtue  ; — they  represent  to  me,  in 
short,  those  great  abstract  truths,  principles,  and  virtues,  which  are 
the  enthusiasm  of  life  ;  and  they  represent  them  in  that  way  which 
is  most  impressive  to  all  men ;  namely,  as  personalized,  and  lived 
out.  So,  Jesus  could  say  : — "  I  am  the  Truth  and  the  Life  ; "  and 
His  victory  lay  in  His  incarnation  of  these  great  things.  And  some 
other  men,  in  their  measure,  and  with  a  difference,  can  say  the 
same  thing.  And  we  like  to  look  at  those  men  ;  it  is  a  miserable 
day  for  us  when  we  do  not  like  to.  My  memory  is  full  of  such 
meetings,  and  it  always  gladdens  me  and  strengthens  me  to  recall 
them. 

Moreover,  let  me  say  to  you,  privately,  it  may  be  much  practi- 
cal advantage  to  you  some  day  to  know,  and  be  known,  by  these 
men  and  brethren  whom  you  meet — say,  in  the  assemblies  of  your 
own  denomination.  Young  men  have  their  difficulties,  in  which 
they  need  assistance  and  protection.  They  have  entanglements  in 
their  parishes,  controversies  and  contentions  against  which  they 
cannot  make  head,  self-sufficient  and  uninspired  deacons  (though 
I  am  obliged  to  say  that  deacons  are  a  maligned  class — they  aver- 
age excellently  well)  ;  but  sometimes  a  monstrous  one  will  spring  up, 
and  then  a  young  minister  needs  some  old,  bulky,  herculean  brother- 
minister  in  whom  to  hide  himself.  Yes,  often,  the  beginners  need 
help  in  their  parishes. 

Or  they  come  into  perturbations  and  uncertainties  of  thought. 
Or  they  go  so  far  as  to  adopt  opinions  which  they  suppose  to  be 
inharmonious  with  the  current  doctrine  of  their  sect ;  and  then 
they  grow  self-conscious  and  unhappy.  The  more  peculiar  they 
seem  to  themselves,  the  more  disinclined  are  they  to  move  about 
freely  among  their  brethren,  and  you  never  see  them  in  the  general 
assemblies.  They  are  afraid.  They  feel  themselves  black  sheep, 
and  they  have  the  touchiness  of  all  black  sheep.  If  any  one  makes 
a  shy  at  them  they  do  not  think  it  is  humor,  but  a  dig  at  their  pecu- 
liarities. And  there  is  no  telling  into  what  retirement  and  misery 
and  explosiveness  they  may  go  at  last.  Probably  it  will  occur  to 
them  that  they  must  leave  their  denomination,  and  see  if  they  can- 
not find  better  adjustments  somewhere  else  ; — and  they  even  wish 


YALE  LECTURES.  143 

they  were  out  of  the  pulpit,  for  good  and  all.  I  have  more  than  once 
seen  men  of  this  sort.  And  more  often  still,  I  have  noticed  young 
men  who  were  putting  forth  the  first  symptoms  of  this  unhappy  state. 

Well,  the  remedy  for  this — if  it  has  not  already  passed  beyond 
remedy— one  remedy  at  any  rate,  and  as  good  as  any  other, 
is  to  mingle  much  in  the  assemblies,  and  rub  against  other  men — 
and  to  take  counsel  of  the  principal  men,  perhaps  privately,  or  more 
likely  in  public  discussions,  where  they  may  be  heard  expressing 
themselves.  As  likely  as  not  you  will  find  that  you  are  not  the 
utterly  eccentric  person  you  had  supposed.  Other  men  have 
thoughts  as  well  as  you,  and  they  know  the  wrench  of  doubt,  and 
the  daze  of  a  man  when  he  does  not  see  how  the  conclusions 
whereat  he  has  arrived  can  be  harmonized  with  the  standards. 

These  matured  and  broad-shouldered  men  whom  I  am  recom- 
mending to  you  in  your  predicaments,  have  succeeded  in  extract- 
ing from  life  several  precious  bits  of  wisdom.  They  have  learned 
how  to  manage  a  parish,  so  that  now  it  would  be  a  very  monstrous 
deacon  that  could  unhorse  them.  They  have  learned  how  to 
cherish  numerous  views  of  their  own,  without  inflicting  them  on 
their  people,  or  on  their  denomination ;  or  striving  to  make  them 
agree  with  the  standards  or  the  standards  with  them.  Standards,  if 
they  are  fit  to  exist,  are  as  celebrated  for  their  omissions  as  for 
their  affirmations — and  the  whole,  large  field  of  their  omissions,  is 
left  for  the  private  thinker  to  expatiate  in,  and  indulge  his  idiosyn- 
cracies.  Moreover,  these  mature  brethren  have  discovered  that 
even  the  great  points  of  Catholic  doctrine,  the  glorious  indisputa- 
bles  of  the  Christian  church,  may  be  held  by  the  private  thinker  in 
their  substance,  while  he  makes  pretty  free  with  their  form.  Now, 
the  substance  of  the  Atonement  of  the  Lord  Jesus  is,  that  He 
interposed  between  man  and  God  in  such  a  way  and  in  such  travail 
of  soul,  that  all  difficulties,  whatever  they  were,  by  which  God  was 
hindered,  and  could  not  pardon  and  save  men,  were  utterly  and 
forever  taken  away ; — but  that  magnificent  generosity  which  is 
enough  to  melt  all  human  hearts,  has  been  reduced  in  some  creeds 
to  a  much  more  particularized  statement  (whether  true  or  not), 
which  is  not  scripturally  binding  on  the  faith  of  anybody,  and  is  to 
be  subscribed  to,  if  subscribed  at  all,  only  out  of  respect  to  that 
underlying  great  truth  just  mentioned.  What  the  creed  is  after  is 
just  that,  and  I  believe  in  the  creed  because  it  is  after  that  j  and  as 
to  its   specific  forms  of  conception  for  that  infinite,  its  patented 


144  YALE  LECTURES. 

abridgements  of  it,  I  will  not  quarrel  with  them,  any  more  than  I 
will  with  its  use  of  this  or  that  single  word  in  its  effort  to  get  out 
what  it  plainly  intends ;  as,  but  for  nevertheless,  or,  nevertheless 
for  but.  There  are  various  ways  of  getting  one's  liberty  in  this 
awful  world  ; — and  old  men  have  found  that  out.  There  is  no  need 
to  secrete  yourself  within  the  confines  of  your  own  parish,  and  feel 
sore  and  scared,  and  never  go  Anywhere,  and  by  and  by  get  your- 
self off  into  some  other  vocation,  because  you  are  such  a  black 
sheep.  Come  up  to  the  meetings.  Confer  with  the  chief  men  who 
have  earned  the  right  to  speak  by  authority.  Listen  to  their  essays. 
Listen  to  their  unconsidered  outgushings  when  they  are  excited,  and 
under  excitement  let  out  the  whole  truth.  Ask  them  privately  for 
some  history  of  the  development  of  their  own  opinions.  And 
when  they  get  through,  ask  them  if  they  think  it  is  right  to  hold 
such  a  budget  of  views  that  they  never  mention,  and  hear  every 
man  of  them  say  yes.  Young  men — and  it  is  sweet  in  them — con- 
ceive that  it  is  not  frank  and  honest  not  to  make  an  exposition  of 
your  entire  interior  so  often  as  you  can  get  a  chance,  and  especi- 
ally before  councils,  who  have  come  together  on  purpose  to  ravage 
said  interiors ;  but,  Brethren,  all  that  councils,  or  anything  else, 
have  a  right  to  know  about  you,  are  those  views  in  your  circle  of 
views  that  are  determinative  essentially  of  your  spirit  and  charac- 
ter ;  and,  which  introduced  into  your  preaching,  will  be  determina- 
tive of  the  spirit  and  character  of  the  people  who  listen  to  you.  At 
any  rate,  come  up  to  the  meetings.     That  is  my  refrain. 

It  may  be,  that  you  have  gone  into  some  off-color  movement 
of  thought,  that  is  really  and  substantially  unorthodox.  Well, 
come  up  to  the  meetings  and  let  us  look  you  over.  Perhaps  you 
are  worth  saving.  Perhaps  if  you  can  be  protected  a  few  years, 
and  have  your  freedom,  you  will  be  able  to  come  out  where 
we  would  all  like  to  have  you.  And  there  are  men  among  us  who 
can  protect  you.  Our  annals  are  pretty  full  of  instances  like  that. 
When  a  certain  friend  of  mine,  then  a  boy,  was  installed  pastor  of  a 
certain  church  in  a  city  hard  by,  where  he  still  is  after  some  twenty- 
four  years  of  continuous  service,  certain  councilmen  voted  against 
his  orthodoxy  ;  and  the  case  went  into  the  public  journals  ;  where- 
upon, an  old  and  eminently  orthodox  man,  pastor  for  a  lifetime 
of  a  neighbor-church  in  that  city,  came  to  his  deliverance,  and  put 
the  entire  weight  of  his  venerable  authority  in  for  a  bulwark  around 
the  young  man.     And  his  unabated  old  age  stirred  itself  up  into  a 


YALE  LECTURES.  145 

lovely  indignation  on  the  subject.  Whether  my  friend's  solid  twenty 
odd  years  have  vindicated  the  defence  then  made  for  him,  judge 
ye.  But  I  want  you  to  see  that  young  men  had  better  know  the 
old  ones,  and  have  the  old  ones  know  them.  The  above-mentioned 
grizzled  warrior  fired  up,  and  opened  his  guns,  because  in  a  pro- 
tracted council  he  had  arrived  at  some  knowledge  of  the  young 
man  ; — and  perhaps  his  youth  reminded  him  of  his  own  days  of 
youth,  and  made  him  tender  and  easy  to  be  drawn  into  an  honest 
quarrel. 

So,  go  to  the  councils,  to  the  associations,  and  the  general  asso- 
ciations, and  the  conferences,  and  the  church  congresses,  and 
whatever  is  up.  If  you  are  worth  defending,  you  will  be  defended. 
And  if  you  need  straightening  out  before  you  can  be  defended  very 
much,  why,  the  meetings  of  the  Brethren  are  good  for  that.  There 
is  nothing  that  enables  one  to  see  his  own  views  about  as  they  are, 
more  than  to  toss  them  out  into  assemblies,  and  watch  the  men 
there  battle-door  them  about.  Opinions  are  valid  or  not,  accord- 
ing as  they  will  stand  battle-dooring.  When  I  left  this  Seminary,  I 
understood  the  introduction  of  moral  evil  into  this  universe,  first- 
rate  and  perfectly.  I  had  a  way  of  putting  the  subject  which  I 
considered  iron-clad,  and  was  willing  to  put  into  action  in  any  com- 
pany. But,  pretty  soon,  I  put  it  in,  in  a  debate  with  a  Methodist 
layman,  a  man  prone  to  tender-hearted  views,  but  intelligent 
withal ;  and  he  made  a  single  remark,  which  I  thought  and  have 
thought  ever  since  made  an  utter  ruin  of  my  iron-clad.  Men  can 
do  such  things  for  us.  Common  men  can.  There  is  not  an 
uneducated  day-laborer  in  New  England — so  that  he  has  native 
sense — who  may  not  be  a  good  person  to  try  your  theology  upon 
and  see  what  he  says  about  it.  You  do  not  believe  in  Materialism. 
Well,  go  and  talk  with  the  Materialists.  You  have  rigged  a  pretty 
boat  of  your  own,  full-sailed,  full-sparred,  shapely,  and  flag  at  high 
mast ;  now  send  her  to  sea,  and  let  the  Materialists  blow  on  her 
with  all  their  winds ; — not  by  printed  essays,  and  formal  volumes 
(all  that  you  have  looked  into,  every  leaf,  before  you  made  your 
boat),  but  by  arguments,  face  to  face,  and  by  conversations,  and 
the  whirl  of  general  debate.  In  that  free  way  all  points  are  hit, 
and  all  the  lights  and  shades  of  things  are  brought  out  as  they 
never  are  in  books. 

Clarify  your  opinions  then  in  the  gatherings  of  your  brethren. 
Give   them  a  chance   to   sift   them    for   you.     They   are  experts. 


146  YALE  LECTURES. 

Certain  ancient  bones,  which  had  been  dug  up  years  ago,  went  wan- 
dering around  the  earth  to  have  some  man  identify  them  as  belonging 
to  this  or  that  animal ;  and  no  one  knew  them  ;  even  Hugh  Miller 
could  not  tell ;  but  at  last  they  found  their  prophet  in  Professor 
Agassiz,  who  recognized  them  directly.  So  much  for  having  Agassiz 
to  carry  our  bones  to  ; — and  so  much  for  having  the  sense  to  carry 
them.  Go  to  your  wise  men  with  your  notions,  my  Brother.  Go 
to  the  conventions,  where  you  can  find  them.  Go  to  the  councils, 
where  their  wisdom  is  likely  to  come  out. 

And  much  acquaintance  with  the  brethren,  makes  them  valua- 
ble to  you  in  many  other  ways.  When  you  want  a  new  parish  they 
will  help  you ; — and  how  can  they  help  you  to  much  purpose,  if 
they  have  never  had  an  opportunity  to  sample  you  ?  When  you 
want  formal  advice  on  some  personal  matter,  or  some  matter  eccle- 
siastical, they  will  be  glad  to  obey  your  call  on  them,  and  come  to 
you,  and  put  their  sympathetic  minds  into  your  case.  Yes,  this  guild 
of  ours  is  one  of  the  best.  Close-knit,  manly,  tender,  and  true,  are 
the  ties  that  bind  our  men  together,  when  we  know  each  other,  have 
exchanged  pulpits,  have  worked  along  side  and  man  to  man,  have 
stirred  up  conventions  together,  have  gone  out  in  the  Autumn,  as  a 
general  conference,  quartering  ourselves  for  days  on  the  unresist- 
ing inhabitants,  have  fought  each  other  in  councils,  and,  in  the 
midst  of  all,  have  kept  up  the  flow  of  our  love  feasts. 

And  speaking  of  love  feasts,  reminds  me  that  I  intended  to 
make  a  whole  separate  fifth  head,  on  the  kindliness  engendered 
among  ministers  by  the  meetings  they  have ;  —  which  kindliness , 
while  it  is  enjoyable,  very,  as  a  mere  feeling,  works  out  also  into 
many  utilities.  I  have  said  as  much,  but  I  have  some  other  thoughts 
in  my  mind  about  it.  For,  instance,  how  personal  contact  leads 
on  to  esteem  and  affection  for  those  who  are  opposed  to  you  theo- 
logically, and  who  have  been  a  little  disagreeable  to  you  on  that 
account,  as  likely  as  not.  Or,  something  else  has  made  them  disa- 
greeable. You  have  heard  things  about  them ; — that  they  are 
combative — that  they  cannot  preach  much — that  they  gush — that 
they  are  inexact  thinkers — or  fanatical  reformers — or  voluble — or 
ambitious.  Many  things  get  afloat,  first  and  last,  taking  all  ministers 
together,  and  the  first  movement  of  the  depraved  human  intellect 
is  to  generalize  upon  the  whole  man  from  a  single  unpleasant  bit 
of  information  like  that.  Perhaps  that  single  thing  is  all  you  know 
about  him.     Some  twenty  or  more  years  ago,  a  woman  where  I  went 


YALE  LECTURES.  147 

to  preach  refused  to  go  to  the  church,  because  I  was  a  Sabbath- 
breaker,  she  said.  All  I  did,  in  those  days,  was  to  take  a  walk 
Sunday  afternoons,  which  I  must  take  or  burst,  I  usually  had  so 
much  steam  on.  Moreover,  she  ought  to  have  recollected  my 
numerous  virtues,  and  she  would  have  done  it  if  I  could  have  made 
her  acquaintance.  I  shall  never  forget  the  first  time  I  saw  William 
Lloyd  Garrison,  and  heard  him  speak.  He  was  a  much  more  lamb- 
like man  in  his  face  than  I  expected  to  see,  and  more  mild-voiced, 
and  more  considerate,  in  fact,  in  what  he  said.  I  had  imputed  to 
his  person  the  deformity  (as  I  thought  it)  of  his  political  opinions. 
I  fancy  that  many  persons  were  similarly  surprised  when  they 
first  met  in  private  the  late  Dr.  Leonard  Bacon,  and  felt  the  suffusion 
of  his  geniality  and  his  uncontentious  utterance,  and  his  humor 
and  sparkle.  All  they  had  known  was  the  pound  of  his  trip-ham- 
mer movements  against  slavery,  and  other  nefarious  things.  They 
had  not  been  told  that  his  heaven-shaking  hammerings,  were  made 
to  be  the  sounding  and  awful  things  they  were,  by  the  great  heart 
that  was  in  him ; — a  heart  that  did  not  often  cry,  but  saved  itself 
for  those  strokes  of  Thor. 

It  is  best  to  meet  men,  and  size  them  on  all  sides,  and  take  a 
taste  of  all  their  qualities.  Then,  most  likely,  you  cannot  hate  them 
if  you  want  to.  The  earnest  theology  of  Father  Taylor,  the  cele- 
brated sailors'  preacher  in  Boston  (it  is  an  old  story),  had  led  him 
to  locate  Ralph  Waldo  Emerson  in  a  future  Hell ;  but  when  he 
had  met  him,  and  felt  his  pulse,  he  did  not  know  where  to  put  him  ; 
he  said,  Emerson's  opinions  kept  him  out  of  Heaven,  and  his 
good  character  kept  him  out  of  Hell,  and  there  did  not  seem  to  be 
any  place  for  him  ;  though  it  was  evident  that  Taylor  was  in  danger 
of  landing  him  in  Heaven,  notwithstanding  all  his  Paganism, 
Pantheism,  and  big-headed  Jupiter-like  dubiousness.  Dr.  John 
Brown  of  Edinburgh,  in  his  biography  of  his  father,  gives  some 
account  of  a  dear  old  Scotch  clergyman,  his  Uncle  Ebenezer, 
who  was  shaken  from  his  foundations  one  day,  a  little  as  Father 
Taylor  was.  In  his  not  strong  old  age,  he  started  across  the 
open  country,  on  his  pony,  in  a  heavy  snow  storm,  to  fulfill  an 
engagement  to  preach.  Nobody  could  dissuade  him,  and  he  went. 
And  he  tumbled  over  at  last,  pony  and  all,  and  was  wallowing  in 
his  helplessness,  when  there  happened  along  some  rude  fellows  cart- 
ing whiskey  to  the  town.  And  they  tugged  him  up  and  lifted  the 
pony,  and  put  the  old  man  on,  and  dusted  off  the  snow,  and  ran  for 


148  YALE  LECTURES. 

a  drink  of  the  whiskey  for  him,  which  he  swallowed  gratefully,  and 
made  a  downright  tender  time  over  him,  rough  creatures  and 
wicked  though  they  were.  "  Next  presbytery  day  "  (says  Dr.  Brown) 
"after  the  ordinary  business  was  over,  Uncle  Ebenezer  rose  up  (he 
seldom  spoke)  and  said  : — Moderator,  I  have  something  personal 
to  myself  to  say.  I  have  often  said  that  real  kindness  belongs  only 
to  true  Christians,  but  (and  then  he  told  the  story  of  those  men) 
more  true  kindness  I  never  experienced  than  from  those  lads.  They 
may  have  had  the  grace  of  God,  I  don't  know ;  but  I  never  mean 
again  to  be  so  positive  in  speaking  of  this  matter."  Well,  that  is 
the  effect  of  knowing  people.  It  is  easy  to  reason  on  the  wavering 
of  Father  Taylor  and  Uncle  Ebenezer,  and  prove  that  this  talk  of 
theirs  was  mere  weakness,  and  that  if  meeting  men  leads  to  compro- 
mising one  eternal  truth  in  that  manner,  we  were  better  not  to  meet 
them  ;— and  the  less  assemblies  we  have  the  better — assemblies,  that 
is,  where  various  theologies  are  mixed  together.  Let  Old  School 
Calvinists  meet  only  Old  School  men,  and  New  School  men  their 
sort,  and  Armenians  their  sort,  and  let  ministers  who  do  not  know 
what  they  do  think,  have  assemblies  of  their  own  and  enjoy  their 
own  confusion.  That  seems  sensible,  perhaps,  but  not  very,  to  my 
mind.  A  theology  that  does  not  include  all  the  plain  facts  of  the 
creation,  as  Uncle  Ebenezer's  did  not,  had  better  be  rolled  about 
on  a  snowy  moor,  and  receive  gifts  of  comfortable  whiskey  from 
the  sons  of  Satan  ;— and  a  theology  which  does  include  all  facts, 
had  better  meet  in  convention,  and  council,  the  theologies  that  do 
not,  in  order  that  it  may  learn  to  hold  the  truth  in  love,  by  being 
made  to  love,  personally,  the  false  theologians.  There  is  no  need 
to  surrender  anything.  It  never  makes  any  impression  on  me,  to 
meet  an  Old  School  Calvinist — that  I  could  ever  see — except  that, 
loving  him,  as  I  am  generally  forced  to,  I  take  on  a  habit  of  stating 
my  own  theology  with  the  air  of  a  man  who  has  heard  from  the  other 
side,  and  knows  that  there  are  Old  School  errorists  in  the  world. 
In  the  North  American  Review  some  time  since,  Robert  Ingersoll 
made  a  deliverance  on  and  against  Christianity,  which  called  out  an 
article  in  reply  from  Judge  Black ;  and  then  Ingersoll  spoke  again, 
and  then  there  came  a  word  from  your  own  Professor  Fisher.  And  I 
know  of  no  better  example  of  right  and  wrong  polemics,  in  respect 
of  touchiness,  dogmatism,  and  personal  animosity,  than  those  two 
pro-Christian  articles.  Both  of  those  writers  show  distinctly  that 
they  have  heard  from  the  other  side,  to  wit — from  Mr.  Ingersoll ; — 


YALE  LECTURES.  149 

they  both  stand  front-face  to  that  man,  but,  O  !  the  difference  in  the 
faces  !  One  was  almost  enough  to  make  Ingersoll  glad  he  is  a 
Pagan,  and  the  other  ought  to  make  him  a  Christian.  Not  merely 
is  the  intellectual  weight  of  the  professor's  statement  very  great,  but 
there  is  not  a  flush  of  emotion  throughout  the  whole  which  could 
not  be  conscientiously  and  gladly  undersigned  by  all  Christendom  ; 
and  Ingersoll  himself  could  not  help  loving  the  man  who  took 
his  life  so  Christianly. 

Now,  my  thought  is  that  contrary  kinds  of  men  be  thrown 
together  as  much  as  may  be,  in  order  that  under  the  persuasion  of 
each  other's  perceived  good  qualities,  they  may  not  sacrifice  their 
principles,  but  maintain  them  with  a  certain  lenitude.  There  is  no 
more  real  push  in  a  battering  ram  than  there  is  in  a  Spring  sun. 
The  ram  would  pulverize  ice  effectually,  but  so  would  the  sun ;  and 
there  would  be  so  much  cushion  in  the  push  of  the  sun,  as  to  make 
the  ice  almost  happy  to  die  under  the  pressure. 

And,  after  all,  Brethren,  the  whole  end  of  Theology  is  love.  It 
seems  hard  to  realize  that  that  is  so,  but  so  it  is.  If  your  theology 
does  not  make  you  loving,  it  has  not  Christianized  you,  and  to  that 
extent  is  not  a  Christian  theology.  All  ecclesiasticism,  and  all  doc- 
trinalizing,  is  in  order  to  character,  and  the  soul  of  character  is  love. 
Preach  the  truth  in  love,  and  for  the  development  of  love.  Go  to 
the  assemblies  of  your  brethren,  for  love's  sake.  In  some  cases 
seeing  a  man  may  make  you  dislike  him,  but  I  do  not  think  it 
works  so  with  ministers,  as  a  rule.  While  I  write  this  sentence,  I 
am  trying  to  think  of  a  minister  whom  I  know  well,  that  I  really 
and  rather  totally  dislike — and  I  have  not  recalled  one  yet.  Robert 
Burns  wrote  an  address  to  the  Devil,  which  ends  up  with  the  follow- 
ing bewitching  touch  of  benevolence.  Burns  had  spent  some  nine- 
teen verses,  giving  his  Majesty  a  plain  statement  of  his  mean  opin- 
ion of  him,  ending  with  this  irreverent  snapper : 

An'  now,  auld  Cloots  I  ken  ye're  thinkin 
A  certain  Bardie's  rantin',  drinkin, 
Some  luckless  hour  will  send  him  linkin, 

To  your  black  pit : 

But,  faith  !  he'll  turn  a  corner  jinkin, 

An'  cheat  you  yet. 

But,  suddenly  now,  from  that  height  of  impiety  the  Bardie 
drops  to  this  flow  of  the  heart : 


150  YALE  LECTURES. 

But,  fare  you  weel,  auld  Nickie-ben  ! 
O  wad  ye  tak  a  thought  an'  men' ! 
Ye  aiblins  might — I  dinna  ken — 

Still  hae  a  stake — 
I'm  wae  to  think  upo'  yon  den, 

Ev'n  for  your  sake  ! 

Tt  seems  to  me  that  we  ministers  had  better  keep  going  to 
assemblies  until  we  have  just  about  that  feeling  towards  the  most 
questionable  of  the  brethren.  Attack  their  errors,  rebuke  their 
faults,  lay  on  and  spare  not.  Do  not  fail  to  see  the  false  opinions 
of  ministers  and  other  Christians,  and  their  erroneous  practices,  and 
the  flaws  and  disproportions  which  make  them  imperfect  in  charac- 
ter ;  but,  and  at  the  same  time,  be  lenient  and  accept  them,  in  the 
large  receptivity  of  love,  even  as  God,  for  Christ's  sake,  has  excepted 
both  them  and  you. 


PARISH    INCONVENIENCES. 


I  shall  lecture  to-day  on  what  I  call  Parish  Inconveniences, 
using  a  mild  term  in  order  not  to  frighten  you  too  much  at 
first.  And  as  there  are  a  good  many  of  these  inconveniences  to  be 
mentioned,  I  will  plunge  into  their  midst  as  soon  as  possible,  and 
call  your  attention,  in  the  first  place,  to  the  great  subject  of  small 
salaries  : — a  subject  on  which  my  views  have  greatly  changed  since 
I  was  first  compelled  to  take  an  interest  in  it,  long  years  ago.  I  do 
not  know  but  a  little  income  seems  little  to  me  -even  yet  (I  wish  it 
did  not,)  but  my  feeling  about  such  a  thing  for  ministers  is  cer- 
tainly different ;  and  of  course  I  want  to  impart  to  you,  that  dif- 
ferent, and  wiser,  and  less  depressed  state  of  mind. 

When  I  went  out  into  the  Christian  Ministry,  I  was  not  very 
hilarious  in  regard  to  this  whole  business  of  the  money.  I  had  not 
the  least  ambition  to  grow  rich  ; — I  gave  that  up  totally  when  I  con- 
sented within  myself  to  this  special  Christian  service,  and  when  a 
bright  lady  in  New  Haven  said  to  me,  then  a  theological  student 
there, — "  I  had  as  lief  take  a  ticket  to  the  poor-house  as  to  marry  a 
minister,"  I  could  not  deny  that  there  was  a  certain  show  of  sound- 
ness in  her.  I  expected  to  be  poor,  and  was  willing  to  be.  That 
did  not  deject  me.  But  I  had  been  led  to  expect  to  be  worse  than 
merely  poor.  I  thought  I  might  be  indecently  poor.  I  thought 
that  a  great  many  churches  were  willing  their  ministers  should  be 
indecently  poor,  and  miserable.  I  did  not  see  why  I  might  not 
strike  on  just  such  a  people  as  that.  A  young  man,  looking  out  on 
life,  that  practical  unknown,  is  easily  impressed  and  needs  chirking, 
I  found.  Whereas,  just  at  that  time,  certain  books  had  come  out, 
in  which  the  shady  side  of  ministerial  experience — especially  the 
financial  side — was  presented  with  a  pre-raphaelite  realism  and 
vigor  quite  appalling.     Those  books  I  read,  marked,  learned,  and 


152  YALE  LECTURES. 

inwardly  digested,  as  the  Liturgy  says,  and  believed  in.  And  I  sup- 
pose now  that  they  told  the  truth,  though  they  by  no  means  rose  to 
the  full  height  of  a  witnesses  oath  : — "  the  truth,  the  whole  truth, 
and  nothing  but  the  truth." 

In  addition  to  these  books,  for  a  comfort,  I  had  some  recol- 
lection of  my  father's  pastorates  when  I  was  a  young  thing  and 
followed  His  fortunes  while  he  circulated  about  the  country  as  an 
itinerant  Methodist.  As  a  boy,  I  contemplated  the  ministry  in  its 
utilitarian  aspects  in  the  main,  and  when  my  clothes  were  not  as 
expensive  as  I  would  have  liked,  and  my  spending  money  was 
limited,  and  when  my  father  had  offers  from  well-to-do  childless 
women  to  adopt  me  for  their  own,  I  charged  the  whole  thing  on  the 
parishes  that  we  served,  and  thought  they  were  mean.  I  now  see 
that  we  were  in  less  want  than  I  thought,  and  that  the  parishes  were 
not  mean ;  but  so  far  back  as  that  great  day  when  I  stepped  forth 
from  this  Yale  School  of  Divinity,  those  early  prejudices  still  lin- 
gered with  me  and  assisted  the  melancholy  books  just  mentioned 
to  get  an  exaggerated  hold  upon  me. 

I  tell  you  those  things,  my  friends,  because  you  are  where  I 
once  was — that  is,  about  to  begin  life — and  may  be  tried  by  feelings 
similar  to  mine,  and  I  want  to  give  you  my  later,  and  more  mature 
and  final  views  on  this  matter,  as  fitted  perhaps  to  head  off  any 
downheartedness  on  your  part  as  you  survey  the  years  to  come. 

Now,  I  shall  admit  at  the  outset,  that  you  must  not  look  to 
make  money  in  the  Christian  Ministry; — for  the  following  plain 
reasons.  First,  your  income  will  not  be  large  enough  for  that, 
especially  as  you  will,  every  man  of  you,  see  the  divine  beauty  of 
the  early,  but  never-obsolete  scripture  : — "It  is  not  good  for  Man  to 
be  alone," — and  proceed  to  be  married  so  soon  as  possible!  I  have 
often  thought  it  would  be  good  to  have  a  celibate  class  in  the  ranks 
of  our  Protestant  Ministry,  with  a  view  to  service  in  feeble  parishes 
— temporary  celibates — but  it  is  a  plain  case  that  we  cannot  have 
them.  So  ministers  cannot  make  money.  Their  wives  and  their 
other  luxuries  will  keep  them  right  up  to  the  limits  of  their  limited 
resources.  Next,  you  will  not  be  parsimonious  enough  to  make 
money  on  your  moderate  income — I  hope.  Next,  you  will  not  be 
sufficiently  worldly-wise.  You  will  be  piously  absorbed  in  your 
subjects,  and  your  parochial  work,  and  what  knack  for  business 
you  may  have  by  inheritance  from  thrifty  and  managing  ancestors, 
will  gradually  die  out  of  you,  probably — until  you  have  only  head 


YALE  LECTURES.  153 

enough  left  to  draw  your  salary  and  pay  your  debts.  Of  course, 
once  in  a  while  there  comes  up  a  minister  who  defies  all  these 
rules,  and  stores  away  some  money ; — he  is  very  saving  and 
watchful,  and  his  wife  does  a  world  of  hard  work,  and  all  his 
weaned  children  are  turned  to  immediate  use,  and  he  does 
not  squander  anything  on  philanthropies — or  possibly  nothing  can 
kill  out  of  him  a  natural  aptitude  for  infallible  investments,  so  that 
his  minute  savings  swell,  as  by  an  inherent  and  irresistible  expansibil- 
ity of  their  own  ;  but  men  of  this  stamp  are  rather  the  exception  in 
our  profession,  and  most  likely  none  of  you  will  ever  be  rich  ;- — un- 
less you  have  been  born  so.  And  if  you  have,  I  am  not  sure  that  it 
will  be  any  benefit  to  you. 

But  be  not  alarmed  ; — you  will  not  starve.  In  other  pursuits 
men  do,  but  somehow  in  ours  they  do  not.  The  raft  is  the  type  of 
our  condition  ;  it  is  a  very  wet  thing,  but  it  never  sinks.  Ships  do — 
the  bravest  of  them.  You  may  serve  most  poverty-stricken  parishes, 
but  you  will  never  starve.  I  never  saw  the  day  when  my  father's 
table  was  not  more  than  sufficiently  supplied.  I  never  sat  at  a  min- 
ister's table  which  did  not  have  on  it  more  than  anyone  needed. 
The  most  meagre  one  I  ever  did  see — it  had  such  humble  signs 
about  it  that  I  felt  glad  to  move  on  and  relieve  my  kindly  host — 
was  the  board  of  a  man  with  flesh  on  his  bones  enough  to  bring  his 
weight  to  the  substantial  figure  of  two-hundred  pounds  and  over ;  so 
that,  after  all,  he  could  not  have  been  much  cramped. 

If  you  happen  to  become  the  Minister  of  a  people  who  are 
decidedly  indigent,  they  will  at  least  be  sure  to  keep  you  as  well  as 
they  keep  themselves,  and  if  they  live,  you  can.  Yes,  they  will  try 
to  keep  you  a  little  better,  out  of  that  respect  and  love  for  your  holy 
office,  which  is  as  strong  in  a  poor  man's  heart  as  in  anybody's. 
And,  Brethren,  it  is  curious  how  comfortable  one  can  be  on  an  un- 
comfortable salary.  I  was  once  reduced  to  living  on  potatoes,— 
and  even  they  were  carefully  counted  out,  our  supply  was  so  small. 
But  I  suffered  no  hurt, — neither  did  any  of  my  party.  Some  of 
them  grumbled,  but  it  was  ridiculous.  It  does  us  good  to  get  down 
to  the  simplicities  of  life,  and  see  exactly  what  human  nature  needs. 
More  than  potatoes,  in  the  long  run,  1  suppose  physiology  would 
say,  but  ministers  always  do  have  more  than  that.  My  first  salary 
was  eight  hundred  dollars,  but  I  was  as  well  supplied  as  I  am  now 
on  six  times  the  amount.  Because  I  had  not  the  wants  that  I  now 
have.  And  if  I  had  been  kept  to  eight  hundred,  I  never  should  have 
ii 


154  YALE  LECTURES. 

had  the  wants — many  of  them.  It  would  hurt  me  now  to  be 
squeezed  back  into  eight  hundred.  I  have  sprouted  far  and  wide 
since  then — a  sort  of  banyan  tree — and  that  original  pot  would  not 
hold  me  ;  but  I  could  have  lived  without  sprouting,  if  I  had  had  to  ; 
and  I  presume  now  that  some  day  I  shall  be  called  to  lop  off,  and 
lop  off,  to  even  less  than  those  original  dimensions.  And  if  I  am,  it 
is  in  likelihood  that  I  shall  feel  like  a  tree  that  has  been  trimmed,  or 
like  a  man  who  has  lost  his  legs.  The  trimmed  tree  looks  as  it  did 
before  it  pushed  out  those  branches,  but  the  having  pushed  them  out 
has  gone  into  its  experience  permanently,  and  it  will  never  feel  as  it 
did  before  ; — it  feels  larger,  and  richer,  and  much  more  of  a  tree — and 
it  is  a  well  known  fact  that  a  limbless  man  has  a  sense  of  limbs  as 
much  as  he  ever  had.  A  human  being  has  a  great  amount  of  ca- 
pacity of  self-adjustment  to  changed  circumstances,  and  that  is  one 
of  the  tokens  of  his  high  rank  in  the  creation.  If  he  is  planted  in  a 
fat  soil  he  blossoms,  and  if  hung  in  mid-air,  he  has  the  persistency 
of  a  cactus,  and  keeps  green  and  blossoms,  more  or  less. 

The  point  at  which  an  educated  clergyman  most  longs  for 
money  is  his  library.  There  you  may  be  called  to  some  real  self- 
denial.  Possibly  you  would  be  a  larger  man  if  you  could  buy  more 
books  and  possibly  a  more  useful  man.  That  last  is  more  doubtful, 
though.  Books  and  wide  reading,  often  make  men  more  heady,  and 
unhumble  and  great-gun-like  in  the  pulpit,  than  is  profitable  to  the 
hearer  who  is  more  stunned  than  edified  if  guns  shout  too  loud. 
Still,  I  must  not  run  down  books.  We  do  want  them,  and  many  of 
us  want  more  than  we  can  get.  It  would  disgust  me  to  be  confined 
to  the  one  and  only  full  commentary  that  adorned  my  father's 
library,  to  wit,  Adam  Clarke's  ; — a  commentary  of  so  much  less  worth 
than  many  others  of  to-day  that  I  never  think  of  looking  into  it. 
There  it  stands  on  my  shelf,  six  octavos,  like  Caesar's  dust,  to  stop 
a  hole  to  keep  the  wind  away,  I  might  almost  say ; — though  I  would 
not  disparage  it.  But  I  need  more  than  such  a  help  certainly ;  and 
we  all  do. 

Well,  My  Brethren,  however  large  your  library,  you  will  still  be 
called  to  much  intellectual  self-denial,  if  you  are  to  be  a  thoroughly 
effective  Minister  of  Jesus  Christ.  You  cannot  spread  abroad  into 
general  culture.  Much  in  Science  you  must  omit.  Much  in  Litera- 
ture you  must  omit.  Much,  too,  in  Art.  Many  modern  specialties 
you  must  be  ignorant  of,  substantially.  Scattered  along  through  the 
pews  in  your  congregation,  there  will  be  numbers  of  men  who  know 


YALE  LECTURES.  155 

more  than  you  do  along  certain  lines ;  lines,  too,  whither  your 
tastes  run  as  strongly  as  do  theirs.  That  is  true  of  the  broadest, 
and  strongest  and  most  informed,  of  us,  with  our  great  libraries. 
We  must  narrow  ourselves,  in  order  to  force ; — read  less  than  we 
desire,  and  think  less  excursively  than  we  desire.  You  cannot  get 
rivers  to  tide  on  deep,  swift  and  heavy  unless  you  shut  them  in  nar- 
row runways. 

But  that  is  the  doom  of  all  men.  Self-denial  and  self-speciali- 
zation, with  a  view  to  chosen  ends,  is  the  law  to  which  the  lawyer 
and  the  physician,  the  merchant,  mechanic,  financier,  teacher, 
farmer,  musician,  engineer,  and  all  the  rest,  must  submit.  Civiliza- 
tion gets  on  by  these  distributions  of  labor,  and  these  intense  and 
narrow  concentrations.  But,  Brethren,  I  beg  you  to  notice  how 
little  narrow  our  specialization  is  as  compared  to  that  of  some  men  ; 
— a  banker's — a  tradesman's — a  sea  captain's — a  soldier's — and 
many  more.  First  of  all,  our  vocation  means  brain-work,  and  not 
mere  fingering  in  some  craft,  or  brute  tugging.  And  it  means  brain- 
work  in  the  exercise  of  all  the  nobler  parts  of  the  brain,  the  in- 
tellectual parts,  the  affectional  parts,  the  moral  parts.  I  do  not 
think  of  any  pursuit  in  which  a  man  is  more  often  called  to  put  his 
entire  and  royal  self  into  the  field.  Our  themes  are  of  the  largest. 
The  interests  we  handle  are  of  the  largest.  The  motives  we  wield 
are  large  and  high.  The  satisfactions  of  our  office  are  of  the  sweet- 
est and  purest.  So,  we  can  afford  to  contract  ourselves  in  our  read- 
ing a  little,  and  subject  ourselves  to  the  loss  of  some  esthetic 
delights  and  some  culture  ; — to  accept  the  fact  of  few  costly  pictures 
on  our  walls — and  few  of  those  household  decorations  and  furnish- 
ments  that  are  so  full  of  art  and  so  exquisite  to  the  cultivated  eye. 

But  at  this  point  I  make  another  turn  on  the  money  question, 
and  inform  you  that  ministers  do  have  secured  to  them  by  the  work- 
ings of  providence  a  long  list  of  real  prosperities.  Often  they  have 
no  money  to  educate  their  children,  but  the  children  get  educated. 
My  father  could  not  help  me  much,  but  that  made  no  difference, 
except  to  give  me  the  discipline  and  delight  of  doing  for  myself. 
Minister's  daughters  are  generally  considered  very  marriageable 
girls — no  catch  pecuniarily,  but  the  loveliest  kind  of  a  catch  other- 
wise ;  and  after  all,  wedded  life  does  not  live  by  bread  alone.  Min- 
isters have  a  good  many  windfalls.  What  is  a  windfall  ?  It  is  God 
doing  the  unexpected  and  surprising.  If  you  pry  into  a  windfall  far 
enough,  you  can  explain  and  show  it  to  be  just  what  might  have 


156  YALE  LECTURES. 

been  looked  for ;  but  you  had  better  not  pry  ; — let  it  stand  as  wind- 
fall, and  you  have  the  good  sensation  of  it.  I  had  one  such  when 
in  Yale  Seminary.  Right  out  of  a  clear  sky  dropped  that  lightning. 
When  I  was  married  I  had  another.  It  was  only  two  hundred  dol- 
lars a  year  added  to  my  salary,  but  it  showed  that  windfalls  were 
possible  in  my  case.  I  must  not  run  into  the  particulars  of  my  own 
life  too  much,  but  I  wish  I  might  relate  to  you  some  things  which 
have  been  told  me,  by  some  of  my  much-straitened  fellow  ministers. 
The  Lord  takes  care  of  his  own.  Serve  him,  and  he  will  do  won- 
ders for  you.  "The  eyes  of  the  Lord  run  to  and  fro  throughout  the 
whole  earth  to  show  himself  strong,  in  behalf  of  them  whose  heart  is 
perfect  toward  him."     (2  Chron.  xvi,  9.) 

Thy  power  is  in  the  ocean  deeps 

And  reaches  to  the  skies; 
Thine  eye  of  mercy  never  sleeps, 

Thy  goodness  never  dies. 

Perhaps  you  think  I  am  working  an  optimistic  vein.  Gentle- 
men, that  is  the  vein  to  work  when  speaking  of  our  calling.  If  we 
were  freebooters,  or  corrupters  of  men,  or  landlords  grinding  the 
poor,  there  would  be  no  optimism  about  it ;  but  we  are  God's  am- 
bassadors of  salvation,  and  we  glory  in  our  calling  and  we  know 
that  all  things  work  together  for  our  good.  You  may  say  to  me  that 
my  lot  has  been  an  easy  one,  and  that  therefore,  it  is  easy  for  me  to 
indulge  in  these  high-colored  remarks  ;  but  as  high-colored  remarks 
as  I  ever  heard  have  come  from  ill-conditioned  men,  to  whom  I 
have  said1  in  amazement : — How  do  you  live?  They  have  told  me 
sometimes  in  detail,  and  have  made  me  both  to  laugh,  and  cry 
and  inwardly  shout ;  laugh  and  cry  at  the  mingled  pathos  and  humor 
of  their  stresses  and  distresses,  and  shout  at  the  way  they  emerged 
from  their  emergencies,  and  at  the  strong  spirit  of  life  and  gladness 
in  their  souls  in  despite  of  everything,  and,  in  fact,  because  of  every- 
thing and  all.  I  saw  a  letter  from  a  good  and  true  man,  whose 
parishes  had  always  been  noticeably  undesirable ;  and  it  was 
written  on  chance  scraps  of  paper  of  various  shapes,  so  that 
it  was  difficult  to  track  him ;  but  he  came  out  at  the  end 
with  this  remark  : — "  Brother,  I  hope  you  will  not  look  on  these 
small  bits  of  paper  as  in  any  wise  disrespectful  to  you,  but  rather  as 
one  more  indication  of  my  spirit  of  economy,  and  of  the  ability  I 
have  always  had,  to  live  without  any  visible  means  of  support."  So 
you  see,  he  was  not  crushed.     He  could  laugh  at  his  own  exigencies, 


YALE  LECTURES.  157 

and  he  could  pray,  and  he  could  trust  God.  It  is  not  best  that 
the  worldly  prizes  in  our  profession  should  be  remarkably  glittering. 
They  are  glittering  enough  ;  and  if  they  were  more  so,  we  should 
have  a  glut  of  self-seeking  men  whom  God  could  not  use  as  the 
vehicles  of  his  grace.  I  hope  now,  that  without  sacrificing  truth,  I 
have  given  you  a  touch  of  contentment  in  your  minds,  in  regard  to 
the  pecuniary  side  of  your  life  as  ministers. 

You  will  remember  I  began  to  speak  of  Parish  Infelicities  ; — 
I  recall  you  to  that  idea,  and  declare  unto  you  in  the  second  place, 
that  you  will  strike  an  occasional  infelicity  in  the  form  of  inconve- 
nient persons  ;  such  as  the  disagreeable  deacon  who  has  been  much 
celebrated  in  prose  and  verse  ; — and  the  family  that  crave  an  extra- 
ordinary amount  of  attention ; — and  the  precise  and  obstinate  lay 
theologian  out  there  in  the  congregation  watching  you  ;  and  the 
vehement  politician  who  does  not  wish  you  to  preach  politics,  as  he 
says, — and  the  contrary  person  of  whom  John  B.  Gough  has  said  to 
us,  that  when  the  prayer  meeting  prayed  that  he  might  be  removed 
to  Heaven,  he  spoke  up  from  his  knees  and  told  them  he  would  not 
go ; — and  the  men  and  women  that  like  office  and  must  have  it : — 
and  the  purse-proud  pewholder  and  the  penurious  pewholder ; — and 
the  immoral  man  whom  you  have  hit  between  the  eyes  by  way  of 
discipline,  and  who  on  that  account  feels  sore — he  and  all  his  rela- 
tions— and  needs  floods  of  Christian  love  poured  out  on  him,  to 
keep  him  along — that  is,  to  keep  him  from  making  a  permanent 
surrender  to  sin  and  Satan  in  desperation,  and  to  keep  him  in  your 
congregation,  where,  of  course,  he  had  better  stay,  and  live  down 
his  ignominy — O  !  there  is  a  good  deal  of  human  nature  in  Chris- 
tian Congregations ;  sanctified  in  some  part,  to  be  sure,  but  not 
perfectly  sanctified  ordinarily. 

My  receipt  for  treating  all  these  cases,  I  will  postpone  for  a 
little,  while  I  mention  as  a  third  possible  infelicity  which  will  over- 
take you,  that  your  correctness  as  a  theologian  may  be  heavily  ques- 
tioned and  you  be  thrown  into  some  parish  peril.  Sometimes  that 
questioning  starts  in  your  parish  and  gets  serious  headway,  but 
as  often  it  makes  its  first  headway  among  people  outside,  who  listen 
to  you  only  now  and  then  and  know  you  but  fractionally  ;  and  they 
carry  the  disturbance  into  your  congregation,  and  set  them  wonder- 
ing whether  they  can  trust  their  own  ears  for  the  soundness  of 
their  minister.  The  short-cut  rule  for  suppressing  such  riots  is  just 
to  be  sound  theologically ; — that  is  all.     Think  just  as  they  think. 


158  YALE  LECTURES. 

That  will  stop  them.  But  that  rule  may  seem  coercive  to  some  of 
you ;  so  I  will  name  certain  other  easements  pretty  soon. 

Again,  an  unwelcome  theology  may  not  be  your  only  unloveli- 
ness.  Your  conscience  may  seem  to  force  you  into  public  deliver- 
ances on  various  practical  subjects  in  which  your  people  have  an 
irritable  interest.  They  are  irritable  because  they  are  guilty  of 
something,  or  because  the  thing  you  discuss  has  been  carried  into 
politics  and  struggled  on  at  the  polls,  or  because  some  single  per- 
son of  their  number  is  a  conspicuous  example  of  the  particular 
matter  which  your  sermon  holds  up  ;  or  because  the  whole  denomi- 
nation to  which  your  church  belongs  is  tumultuated  on  the  subject 
you  are  moved  to  unfold  ; — it  may  be  temperance  that  you  are  on, 
and  there  right  along  your  middle  aisle,  in  a  powerful  row  of 
respectability,  may  sit,  and  sit  straight  up,  half  a  dozen  or  more 
men  whose  ability  to  purchase  a  seat  at  all  in  that  metropolitan 
position  depends  on  the  traffic  in  intoxicating  liquors,  in  one  way 
or  another ;  or  you  may  speak  on  divorce,  because  that  matter  is  all 
abroad  and  it  seems  therefore  a  good  time  so  to  speak ;  but  right 
before  you  is  some  one  who  has  been  divorced  and  has  been  mar- 
ried again  with  the  apparent  general  consent  of  the  community ; — 
or  something  you  say  touches  the  choir,  and  next  Sunday  they 
refuse  to  sing ; — or  you  do  what  a  friend  of  mine  once  did,  you 
discharge  a  battery  at  these  nefarious,  cheap  stories  and  colored 
pamphlets  that  infest  the  world  ;  honestly  thinking  that  perhaps,  no 
criminals  are  more  plainly  criminal  than  those  wretched  books ;  but 
you  have  not  been  long  in  your  parish,  and  have  not  learned  that 
one  of  your  oldest  deacons  drives  a  trade  in  that  Literature ;  there- 
fore he  feels  hurt,  as  he  ought  to,  and  you  do  not  feel  so  penitent  as 
he  thinks  you  should,  and  there  you  two  men  are,  to  fight  it  out 
according  to  the  measure  of  grace  given  unto  each  of  you. 

Years  ago  we  all  had  the  subject  of  American  Slavery  for  a 
standing  discomposure  and  risk ;  and  you  young  ministers  can 
hardly  imagine  what  a  time  we  full-fledged  birds  had  over  that. 
Some  of  the  ablest  and  best  ministers  in  the  lands  were  ecclesias- 
tically silenced  because  they  would  not  keep  silent  in  respect  of 
that  great  sin  and  outrage.  Some  ministers  were  voted  down, 
and  others  were  pushed  on  from  parish  to  parish.  I  look  back 
to  my  own  ministrations  at  that  time,  with  amusement,  amaze- 
ment and  admiration.  I  was  willing  to  be  blown  into  the 
sky  by  parish  convulsions  on  that  subject,  and  there  are  numbers 


YALE  LECTURES.  159 

of  fine  people  still  living  who  would  have  been  glad  to  see  me 
go.  But  as  a  matter  of  fact  I  never  went,  and  here  I  am,  to  tell 
you,  Beloved,  how  it  is  that  men  satisfy  their  consciences  as 
preachers  and  still  stay  on  the  earth  not  more  molested  than  is 
good  for  their  patience  and  welfare. 

Still  harping  on  infelicities,  I  want  to  take  a  moment  to  refer 
again  to  the  ticklish  matter  of  church  discipline.  I  consider  that 
one  of  the  very  hardest  things  to  get  through  in  peace.  A  certain 
lenity,  which  amounts  to  laxity  in  some  cases,  has  come  into  our 
practice  in  this  regard,  so  that  if  you  wish  to  ease  yourself  along 
and  wink  at  many  things  and  keep  the  people  all  quiet,  you  can  do 
it,  I  suppose.  But,  now  and  then  you  will  have  the  plainest  kind  of 
a  duty  to  perform  ;  and  then  comes  the  strain  on  your  wisdom 
and  courage.  The  hard  navigation  of  a  case  of  church  discipline, 
comes  of  the  following  particulars,  I  have  found.  You  yourself  are 
tempted  to  slip  along  from  a  strictly  judicial  feeling,  into  the  feeling 
of  a  prosecutor.  This  person  now  up  for  trial  has  disgraced  the 
Christian  Religion  and  disgraced  your  church,  and  you  cannot  bear 
that  he  should  be  let  off  with  no  mark  of  displeasure  on  him  what- 
ever ; — so  you  shoulder  into  the  case  in  a  manner  that  is  remem- 
bered against  you.  Again,  it  is  difficult  to  bring  on  witnesses.  You 
cannot  compel  people  to  testify,  and  where  they  consent  to  appear, 
they  will  go  as  far  as  they  please  and  no  farther.  Again,  the  jury 
before  whom  cases  are  brought,  (I  speak  of  Congregationalism,)  are 
a  mass  meeting  of  men  of  various  ages,  and  perhaps  women — the 
poorest  court  conceivable  in  some  respects. 

Again,  even  the  officers  of  your  church,  the  picked  men  before 
whom  the  offender  is  primarily  brought,  often  know  little  of  ecclesi- 
astical law  and  usage,  and  even  on  the.  common-sense  of  the  case, 
that  range  that  lies  outside  of  law  and  usage,  you  will  be  greatly 
surprised  sometimes  to  see  how  they  will  bewilder  themselves  by  a 
confused  palaver  and  outgush  of  heart  on  the  duty  of  Christian 
forgiveness.  My  impression  is  that  most  Church  Boards  will  dis- 
charge almost  any  sort  of  criminal,  if  only  he  declares  himself  peni- 
tent for  what  he  has  done  ;  unless  in  the  person  of  the  minister  or 
in  some  single  hard-headed  member,  there  is  found  a  man  of  robust 
perception,  who  pushes  the  case. 

Again,  after  the  offender  is  properly  disciplined,  it  requires  a 
great  deal  more  tact,  and  large  wisdom  and  divine  good  feeling 
than  many  ministers  possess,  to  embrace  the  culprit-brother  and  all 


1G0  YALE  LECTURES. 

his  friends,  with  a  heat  of  affection  adequate  to  their  hurt  feeling. 
For  they  will  feel  hurt.  No  matter  what  the  man  has  done,  they  are 
likely  to  feel  injured  because  the  church  has  taken  him  up  so.  In 
every  case  that  I  have  had  to  do  with,  that  has  been  true.  And 
probably  a  considerable  part  of  your  church  will  think  on  the  whole 
that  he  might  have  been  handled  more  gently.  I  wonder  whether 
there  ever  was  an  instance,  since  church  members  began  to  fall  from 
grace,  where  discipline  was  administered  by  a  unanimous  vote. 
Charles  Lamb  tells  of  a  "  gentle  optimist,"  who  could  never  be 
brought  to  criminate  anyone,  very  much ;  and  his  friends  secretly 
agreed  to  invent  a  most  horrible  instance  of  brutality  and  state  it  to 
him,  and  see  if  they  could  not  wake  up  in  him  some  flicker  of  ethical 
vigor ;  but  when  they  had  finished,  the  kind  creature  only  said — 
"  How  eccentric  !  "  And  that  is  about  as  far  as  many  a  church 
trial  can  be  brought  along.  And  that  is  not  extremely  strange 
when  you  recollect  what  a  lackadaisical  view  of  Christian  Charity  and 
Forgiveness  has  got  abroad  and  what  great  obstacles  ordinarily 
hinder  the  putting  in  of  clear  and  overwhelming  evidence  before  a 
Church  Court. 

This  subject  of  discipline  is  so  many-sided  that  I  ought  not  to 
have  introduced  it  all  perhaps,  unless  I  could  spend  an  hour  on  its 
aspects ;  but  I  have  done  it,  and  in  the  few  moments  so  spent  I 
fancy  I  have  succeeded  in  convincing  you  that  when  you  strike  a 
personal  church  case,  you  will  be  likely  to  feel  that  you  have  sailed 
into  a  storm  zone,  where  you  must  close  reef  and  steer  like  a  hero. 

I  hope,  now,  that  I  have  not  multiplied  and  magnified  the  dif- 
ficulties of  a  minister's  lot  till  you  are  weary  and  ready  to  be 
alarmed.  There  is  nothing  to  be  alarmed  about.  All  through  my 
young  days,  I  heard  the  church  people  sing  : — "  Must  I  be  carried  to 
the  skies,  on  flowery  beds  of  ease,"  and  so  on — and  who  does  want 
just  that?  Who,  that  is  anybody.  Remember  that  these  difficulties 
which  I  have  massed  before  you,  do  not  all  come  in  one  day ;  they 
are  scattered  along  the  whole  length  of  the  years,  here  a  little  and 
there  a  little,  according  as  you  are  able  to  bear  them ;  and  perhaps 
there  are  some  of  these  trials  that  some  ministers  escape  altogether. 
And  if  you  do  not  escape  them,  they  will  not  kill  you,  provided  you 
remember  to  put  into  practice  a  few  sentences  of  sense  which  I  now 
lay  down.  I  did  not  invent  these  wisdoms  ;  they  are  just  a  digest  of 
what  ministers  generally  find  out  sooner  or  later.  And  the  sooner 
the  better. 


YALE  LECTURES.  161 

And,  first.  You  must  preach  such  solid  and  good  sermons  all 
along,  and  live  such  a  solid  and  good  life,  that  any  parish  storm 
that  comes  up  by  and  by  will  find  it  hard  to  upset  you.  I  have  in 
mind  at  this  moment  a  most  laborious  and  lovely  parish  minister 
with  whose  affairs  I  was  conversant.  He  was  dislodged  from  his 
office  in  quite  a  gale,  simply  (as  I  judged,)  because  his  sermonizing 
had  always  been  more  emotional  than  brainy.  He  was  affectionate. 
He  was  spiritual.  He  visited  his  people  with  marked  zeal  and 
acceptability.  He  served  them  in  their  sorrows  as  no  other  man 
could.  And  they  could  not  help  loving  him.  And  that  tie  of  love 
was  a  heavy  anchor  to  windward,  when  that  blow  arose.  But  it 
could  not  save  him.  There  was  a  company  of  particularly  intelli- 
gent and  also  admirable  people  in  his  assembly,  who  had  pined  on 
the  diet  he  dealt  out  and  had  not  the  heart  to  hold  on  to  him  with 
both  hands,  when  the  wind  was  taking  him  away.  People  are  afraid 
to  touch  a  powerful  man,  so  to  speak.  They  are  in  a  sort  of  awe 
before  him.  It  is  profane  to  meddle  with  him.  In  that  complex 
thing,  a  powerful  man,  it  may  be  questioned  which  is  most  powerful, 
and  most  contributes  to  hold  him  firm  in  his  parish ;  his  powerful 
preaching,  or  his  good  pastoral  work  whereby  people  are  made  to  love 
him  ; — in  other  words,  whether  it  is  respect  for  a  minister,  or  love 
for  him,  that  principally  makes  permanence  in  his  position ;  but 
for  now,  all  I  care  to  say  is,  that  anything  which  binds  the  man  and 
his  flock  together  is  so  much  preparation  against  that  evil  and  dis- 
tressing day,  when  he  and  they,  in  some  agitation,  begin  to  pull  on 
the  bands  which  bind  them  together.  People  will  put  up  with  a 
great  deal  from  some  men.  The  Pastor  has  made  a  mistake ;  he 
has  mismanaged  a  case ;  he  has  preached  an  inadmissible  sermon, 
he  has  showed  favoritism,  he  has  let  fall  a  word  of  personality,  he 
has  lost  the  customary  fine  poise  of  his  temper ;  he  has  developed  a 
touch  of  infirmity  that  no  one  had  ever  thought  of  in  connection 
with  him  ;  but  they  think  as  Henry  Clay  said  his  constituents  ought 
to  think  of  him ; — that  gun  of  ours  has  been  an  excellent  one 
hitherto,  and  has  not  been  wont  to  miss  fire ;  so  we  will  pick  the 
flint  and  try  it  again.  That  is  the  way  it  works.  That  is  one  of  the 
incidental  and  unsought  advantages  of  doing  one's  duty  with  one's 
might,  straight  along,  for  duty's  dear  sake.  There  seem  to  be 
cyclones  in  these  days,  and  in  some  parts,  that  can  almost  pull  up 
the  foundations  of  the  globe ; — and  such  a  whirl  as  that  may  get 
into  your  parish  and  make  all  moorings  snap  !    In  that  case  you  must 


162  YALE  LECTURES. 

go  with  the  wind,  and  land  where  you  happen  to.  In  some  better 
parish  perhaps. 

My  second  advice  is  ; — keep  your  temper — always.  There  is 
no  exception  to  that.  You  can  do  it.  You  are  inflammable,  but 
you  can  do  it.  I  have  done  it.  I  was  never  angry  with  a 
parishioner  yet.  I  have  been  grieved — a  little — and  indignant  per- 
haps— but  no  man  of  my  congregations  will  say  that  he  ever  saw 
me  angry  with  him.  I  spend  my  anger  on  outsiders.  I  have 
expressed  my  mind.  I  have  resisted  my  parishioners.  I  have 
characterized  their  doings  with  a  full  force  of  adjectives  occasion- 
ally. I  have  presided  in  their  public  meetings  when  they  were  hot 
and  have  argued  against  them  from  the  chair  in  a  square  contest  of 
main  strength,  holding  back  nothing  for  fear's  sake ;  we  had  all 
passed  beyond  fear  we  were  so  much  engaged  ; — but  neither  in 
public  nor  in  private,  have  I  lost  my  good-naturedness.  When  you 
lose  that  you  have  lost  your  best  strength  and  your  best  defence. 

And  when  I  say  these  things,  I  do  not  say  them  boastfully,  but 
only  to  show  that  any  minister  can  maintain,  I  will  not  say  his 
equability,  but  his  temper.  It  is  a  dreadful  state  of  things  if  a  man 
must  not  get  excited.  I  claim  the  privilege  of  being  roiled  as  much 
as  I  please,  provided  the  roiling  stops  short  of  outward  rages  and  of 
unbrotherly  feelings.  It  is  not  unbrotherly  to  be  indignant  at  a 
man,  and  call  him  by  the  names  that  he  deserves  ; — not  necessarily. 
You  may  do  all  that  and  have  that  man  feel,  in  the  very  moment  of 
your  roaring,  that  you  have  no  malignity  towards  him.  Keep  your 
temper.  When  you  preach  on  some  explosive  public  question,  keep 
your  temper.  When  your  soft-hearted  church  lets  off  some  mis- 
creant, keep  your  temper.  When  some  one  says  that  your  sermon 
was  long,  or  sophistical,  or  dull,  or  that  your  prayer  was  tedious,  or 
that  you  have  no  oratory,  or  that  you  do  not  know  how  to  read  the 
scriptures  in  the  congregation  ;  or  that  you  are  dreadful  at  a  funeral, 
or  not  stylish  enough  in  a  marriage  service,  or  not  an  easy  conversa- 
tionalist when  you  make  calls,  or  that  you  are  "  seven-eighths  a 
magnificent  man  and  the  other  eighth  a  hole,"  (as  I  knew  a  prom- 
inent church  member  to  say  of  his  minister) — yes,  young  gentle- 
men, I  draw  all  these  illustrations  from  life ; — but  when  these 
insufferable  observations  are  made,  do  you  quietly  pocket  the 
remark,  and  look  as  bland  as  though  you  had  been  kissed,  and  day 
after  day  consider  whether  it  be  not  true,  that  remark,  or  partially 
true  ; — there  is  great  profit  in  criticism,  if  you  only  candidly  hunt  for 


YALE  LECTURES.  163 

it — but  be  tranquil  tempered,  I  say.  "  Never  resent  an  insult," 
said  a  sensible  old  minister  in  my  vicinity  who  had  spent  a  long 
life  successfully  in  one  parish  ■ — he  meant,  that  is  the  rule  for  a 
minister.  And  he  did  not  mean,  be  a  milksop,  either  ;  he  was  no 
milksop  himself,  but  a  man  of  views  and  vigors.  A  man  of  views 
and  vigors,  but  always  self-restrained,  is  always  respected  ;  a  man  in 
whose  composition  no  downrightness  can  be  discovered,  a  man  of 
timidity  and  pliability,  and  no  possibility  of  noble  indignation,  is 
never  ranked  so  high. 

This  keep-your-temper-doctrine  which  I  have  been  preaching 
I  will  add  to  a  little  and  say ; — treat  all  men  in  an  amiable 
manner ;  the  unlovely  parishioner  so  well  as  the  lovely  one ; 
the  ungentlemanly,  the  bad,  the  one  who  has  treated  you  ill,  the 
one  who  has  got  wrathy  and  left  your  congregation  for  no  good 
reason — no  matter  who  he  is  ;  bow  to  him  on  the  street,  bow  to 
him  on  the  street  when  he  will  not  bow  to  you,  say  good  morning, 
do  his  family  a  kindness,  speak  well  of  his  excellencies  ;  show  him 
that  you  are  not  spending  your  short  three  score  and  ten  years  in 
nursing  antipathies  and  grudges.  I  have  heard  of  ministers,  and 
known  some,  who,  when  they  feel  themselves  wronged  by  somebody, 
will  show  it  in  their  manner  habitually.  It  is  poor  business.  It  is 
imprudent  business.  It  makes  you  feel  unwholesome  in  your  mind, 
and  not  quite  sound  morally.  It  is  so  much  deducted  from  your 
capacity  to  manage  a  parish. 

I  know  right  well  how  this  idea  of  indiscriminate  amiability 
may  offend  some  young  men,  who  are  particularly  honest  and  frank. 
They  think  that  you  ought  to  show  that  you  do  not  feel  alike  towards 
all  people ;  that  it  is  conventionalism,  in  one  of  its  meaner  forms 
not  to ;  that  a  minister  who  scatters  his  blandness  right  and  left  in 
the  fashion  that  I  recommend  has  come  to  be  professional  and  un- 
manly, a  supple  manager  more  than  a  man.  Let  us  be  sincere  if 
we  do  sour  some  people,  and  make  some  parish  losses,  say  these 
fine-spirited  youth. 

Well,  I  myself  used  to  feel  like  that.  And  I  acted  on  it  a  little, 
in  some  cases.  I  never  much  troubled  myself  about  affronts  to  me 
(I  hardly  feel  that  I  ever  had  any,)  but  I  did  enjoy  letting  some 
folks  know  that  I  had  a  small  opinion  of  them  on  account  of  their 
general  character  and  ways.  But  I  have  changed ; — changed  on 
principle  and  changed  by  natural  drift.  I  see  now  that  there  is  a 
large  Newfoundland-dog  way  of  treating  such  matters,  without  any 


164  YALE  LECTURES. 

loss  of  self-respect,  or  lessening  of  moral  perspicacity  and  moral 
energy.  I  should  dread  to  be  a  parish  manager,  a  distributor  of 
flattery  and  lies  and  hypocritical  affection,  for  the  sake  of  parish 
prosperity ;  I  should  rather  swing  clear  over  into  gruffness  and  a 
disagreeable  honesty — but  there  is  a  midway  course  that  avoids  both 
of  those  extremes. 

First  of  all  it  is  possible  to  feel  kindly  towards  all  men — really 
feel  it,  and  not  imitate  it  for  professional  purposes.  And  how  shall 
we  feel  it?  In  several  ways.  If  you  have  a  growing  sense  of  your 
own  imperfections  it  will  much  modify  your  exasperation  at  the  im- 
perfections of  others.  Also,  if  you  have  a  growing  habit  of  recog- 
nizing the  praise-worthy  traits  that  are  apt  to  illuminate  and  beautify 
the  worst  characters,  it  will  tame  down  your  spirit  of  criticism  in  a 
measure.  That  stingy  pewholder  of  yours,  is  truthful,  clean  in  his 
habits,  honest  in  his  business,  and  a  loyal  husband.  That  highly 
combustible  politician,  the  terror  of  his  precinct,  is  generous  money- 
wise  beyond  most  men.  So  it  goes.  People  are  mixed.  There  is 
slag  in  them  ; — wholesale  sometimes,  but  there  is  gold  in  them  too. 

Moreover,  it  will  assist  you  to  be  genial  with  all  classes  and 
kinds,  to  just  move  upon  them  with  spiritual  intentions.  Begin  to 
minister  unto  them  the  salvation  of  the  Lord  Jesus,  and  they  will 
become  wonderfully  interesting  to  you.  You  cannot  hate  a  man 
whom  you  are  striving  to  bless.  Just  there  you  enter  into  the  secret 
of  Christ.     He  was  tender  to  all,  because  on  a  mission  to  all. 

Still  farther,  it  will  assist  you  to  be  tranquil  and  kindly  in  the 
presence-  of  imperfect  men  and  women,  if  you  put  yourself  habit- 
ually with  a  heavy  stress  into  the  great  themes  that  belong  to  your 
vocation.  I  was  never  in  a  fret  yet  which  I  could  not  utterly 
smooth  out  by  looking  steadily  and  long  into  the  grandeurs  of  the 
sky,  or  out  upon  the  shoreless  magnificence  of  the  sea,  or  into  the 
sublimity  of  the  mountains.  And  like  those  infinites  are  our 
spiritual  themes  ; — vast,  majestic,  serene  ; — and  communing  with 
them,  all  small  frictions  end,  all  trivial  interests  are  forgotten,  all 
mortal  passion  dies  away. 

When  you  get  close  to  a  man  by  these  several  devices,  you 
begin  to  have  a  sort  of  enjoyable  interest,  even  in  his  faults.  You 
are  amused  by  them,  perhaps.  They  manifest  themselves  in  ways 
that  are  humorous  to  a  humorous  eye.  A  high-tempered  man  is 
an  object  of  seriousness  and  pity  to  be  sure,  but  you  are  often 
shaken  by  uncontrollable  laughter  over  him,  too.     All  large-natured 


YALE  LECTURES.  165 

ministers — ministers  of  the  big-dog  build — have  some  side-shaking 
stories  to  tell  about  queer  people  they  have  had  in  their  flock,  and 
miserably  flawed  and  blameworthy  people ;  and  about  disparaging- 
remarks  which  free-spoken  and  ungracious  souls  have  put  forth  in 
regard  to  them,  their  sermons,  and  their  services,  and  their  well- 
meant  efforts  to  do  exactly  the  right  thing.  O  !  these  terrible  things 
are  not  terrible,  unless  you  let  them  be  terrible.  Just  take  them 
right  and  they  are  of  no  particular  account.  Even  at  the  time 
they  are  as  small  as  you  please  to  make  them ;  and  when  they  are 
looked  back  upon  through  the  mellowness  of  many  years,  they  are 
scarcely  more  objectionable  than  the  irregular  forms  in  a  landscape  ; 
they  melt  into  the  picture  of  the  dear  past  harmoniously  enough. 

I  must  do  my  whole  duty,  I  suppose,  and  exhort  you  now, 
thirdly,  to  keep  your  tongue  with  all  diligence.  I  heard  a  much- 
experienced  minister  say  in  a  charge  to  a  young  one  whom  we 
were  installing ; — my  brother,  as  you  go  about  your  parish,  keep 
your  ears  open  and  your  mouth  shut.  It  is  as  hard  to  hold  your 
tongue  as  it  is  to  hold  your  temper.  You  might  think  that  an  even 
tempered  and  amiable  minister  would  be  able  to  rule  his  tongue, 
but  it  is  not  always  so.  High  temper  runs  into  speech,  of  course, 
but  so  does  geniality, 

Many  things  grow  worse  by  being  talked  up.  That  criticism 
on  your  sermon  wants  nothing  better  than  to  have  you  squirm  and 
mention  it  to  one  and  another.  As  the  head  of  your  parish,  you 
will  naturally  be  made  a  confidant  by  many  people,  and  when  you 
have  been  a  long  stretch  of  years  in  a  place,  you  will  be  just  rich  in 
information  concerning  almost  every  one  about  you  ;  and  it  will  be 
a  serious  strain  on  you  sometimes,  not  to  use  your  information  and 
set  your  knowledge  afloat.  In  some  conversations  you  will  nearly 
burst  with  your  knowledge.  Both  parties  to  a  controversy  will  come 
to  you  by  night,  separately  and  unbeknown  to  each  other,  and  load 
you  up  with  their  sorrows ;  and  you  must  sit  through  it  all  with  the 
silence  of  a  hypocrite  ;  only  taking  care  not  to  be  so  silent  as  to 
seem  unsympathetic.  It  is  close  work  and  involves  a  great  amount 
of  ability,  though  there  need  be  no  guile  in  it.  You  must  be  a 
sphinx,  and  a  vocal  Memnon  at  the  same  time.  It  is  easy  to  be 
vocal ;  but  to  be  silent  and  vocal  both,  to  speak  words  just  few 
enough  and  just  numerous  enough,  and  to  have  the  spoken  ones  go 
to  the  spot  exactly,  and  do  no  hurt  on  the  passage  thereto  ;  that  is 
the  problem.     A  rifle  ball  goes  to  the  spot  fast  enough,  but  it  may 


166  YALE  LECTURES. 

kill  half  a  dozen  on  the  road.  Let  your  words  be  numbered  and 
well  chosen.  Do  not  peddle  hearsays.  Do  not  have  your  people 
feel  when  you  meet  them,  that  you  are  a  man  that  likes  to  converse 
on  personalities.  Even  innocent  personalities  one  may  have  too 
much  of.  Persons  are  immensely  interesting  to  consider  and 
remark  upon,  but  so  are  subjects  and  principles  and  general 
movements,  if  you  once  get  in  the  way  of  them.  I  had  rather  die 
than  spend  my  life  in  a  perpetual  dribble  and  run-about  of 
personalisms.  It  fritters  your  vigor.  It  fires  your  curiosity.  It 
takes  you  away  from  the  grandeurs  and  tranquilizations  of  legiti- 
mate subjects.  It  injures  your  serviceableness.  It  makes  you  the 
depot  into  which  the  talking  people  all  about  feel  called  to  bring 
their  chatter.  It  turns  a  man  into  everything  that  a  minister  ought  not 
to  be.  Keep  still.  When  trouble  is  brewing,  keep  still.  When  slan- 
der is  getting  on  to  its  legs,  keep  still.  When  your  feelings  are  hurt, 
keep  still,  till  you  recover  from  your  excitement  at  any  rate.  Things 
look  differently  through  an  unagitated  eye.  In  a  commotion  once,  I 
wrote  a  letter ;  and  sent  it,  and  wished  I  had  not.  In  my  later 
years  I  had  another  commotion,  and  wrote  a  long  letter ;  but  life 
had  rubbed  a  little  sense  into  me,  and  I  kept  that  letter  in  my 
pocket  against  the  day  when  I  could  look  it  over  without  agitation, 
and  without  tears.  I  was  glad  I  did.  Less  and  less  it  seemed 
necessary  to  send  it.  I  was  not  sure  it  would  do  any  hurt,  but  in 
my  doubtfulness,  I  leaned  to  reticence,  and  eventually  it  was 
destroyed.  Time  works  wonders.  Wait  till  you  can  speak  calmly, 
and  then  you  will  not  need  to  speak,  may  be.  Silence  is  the  most 
massive  thing  conceivable,  sometimes.  It  is  strength  in  its  very 
grandeur.  It  is  like  a  regiment  ordered  to  stand  still  in  the  mid- 
fury  of  battle.  To  plunge  in  were  twice  as  easy.  The  tongue  has 
unsettled  more  ministers  than  small  salaries  ever  did,  or  lack  of 
ability. 

My  last  item  of  advice,  I  will  name  but  not  expand  very  much. 
In  your  preaching  you  will  be  independent  and  courageous,  and 
have  your  people  understand  you  cannot  be  suppressed  where  your 
conscience  is  involved  ;  but  through  all  this  affirmative  and  down- 
right habit  of  yours,  this  frankness  of  opinion,  this  freedom  to  speak 
of  their  faults  and  their  duties  and  their  mistakes,  they  must  be 
made  to  see  that,  in  your  heart,  you  are  an  advisor  and  not  a  Pope ; 
that  after  you  have  spoken  forth  your  word,  and  put  in  your  influ- 
ence, they  are  at  liberty  to  hold  their  own  opinions  and  go  their 


YALE  LECTURES.  167 

own  path  ;  having  perfect  assurance  that  you  will  not  hector  them, 
not  fall  out  with  them  because  they  do  so.  My  observation  is,  that 
churches  and  congregations  here  in  New  England,  will  receive  almost 
anything  from  an  honest  and  sensible  man,  provided  they  are  con- 
tinually sure  of  that  one  concession  from  him.  Ministers  sometimes 
feel  so  responsible  for  their  people,  that  they  cannot  let  them  alone 
when  they  think  or  do  what  they  cannot  approve.  "  I  must  give  an 
account  of  them  before  God,"  say  these  anxious  men ;  and  they 
interfere,  not  in  the  large  way  of  counsel  only,  but  in  pestering  ways  ; 
in  sputterings,  in  contrivings  and  stratagems,  and  pious  circumven- 
tions of  their  people,  and  affectionate  irritabilities — the  fidgeting  of 
a  nervous  mother  rather  than  the  masculine  largeness  and  repose  of 
a  man  who  means  to  do  his  duty,  and  then  fall  back  on  God,  and  let 
Him  defend  his  own  truth. 

It  is  possible  to  carry  great  loads  of  loving  anxiety  for  your  fellow 
men,  and  want  them  to  do  thus  and  so,  tremendously,  and  preach 
about  it,  and  yet  not  let  your  desire  carry  you  into  pettifogging  endeav- 
ors, and  puttering  and  lying  awake  nights,  and  seeming  to  have  a  con- 
trary spirit,  and  a  desire  for  your  own  way.  A  man  in  the  leader- 
ship and  presidency  of  a  parish,  is  in  a  position  so  responsible  that 
the  longer  he  lives  the  more  insufficient  he  feels ;  but  after  he  has 
done  his  duty  in  an  earnest  and  manly  way,  in  any  given  case,  the 
responsibility  passes  over  upon  God,  and  upon  that  person,  or  that 
people,  to  whom  he  has  ministered,  preached  his  sermons,  re- 
iterated and  urged  his  doctrine,  addressed  his  private  entreaty, 
and  fairly  exhibited  his  pastorly  heart. 

I  have  now  finished  my  rules  for  getting  along  with  parish  in- 
conveniences. And  for  your  encouragement,  I  will  say ; — I 
personally  know  many  ministers  who  are  practical  exponents  of 
these  rules.  And  for  your  still  farther  encouragement,  I  will  add, 
I  can  point  you  to  a  large  number  of  ministers  who  fail  more  or 
less  in  some  of  the  things  I  have  mentioned,  but  who  manage 
parishes  with  large  success  nevertheless.  They  are  weak  at  one  or 
two  points ; — being  too  sensitive  for  example ; — but  they  are  so 
strong  at  all  the  other  points,  that  when  you  come  to  add  them  up, 
(and  that  is  just  what  their  parishes  gradually  do)  ;  their  preaching, 
their  pastoring,  their  executive  ability,  their  advisory  weight  and 
skill,  their  felicity  on  special  occasions,  their  shining  qualities  at  a 
genteel  tea-party,  their  serviceableness  in  the  affairs  of  the  town,  and 
all  the  rest  of  their  powers,  faculties,   attributes,   and   decorative 


168  YALE  LECTURES. 

uses  ._add  them,  I  say,  and  get  the  sum  of  them-they  are  truly 
m  n'who,  once  settled  in,  over,  and  on,  a  congregate,  can  stay 
There  as  long  as  a  man  is  apt  to  care  to  stay  anywhere  m  thrs 
migratory  generation. 


CEREMONIAL  OCCASIONS. 


I  shall  spend  an  hour  with  you  this  time  on  the  ceremonial 
occasions  in  which  ministers  are  so  often  called  to  officiate. 

I  began  life  myself  as  an  extreme  anti-ceremonialist,  and  look- 
ing back  for  some  explanation  of  that,  I  find  the  following  things  to 
have  been  true ; — and  I  mention  them,  because  some  of  you  may 
be  in  the  same  darkness  and  misconception  in  which  I  was,  and  as 
I  have  come  out  of  it,  and  know  why  and  how,  I  have  a  conceit 
that,  if  I  am  speeded,  I  may  at  least  start  you  out  of  it.  Speaking 
in  a  Congregational  Seminary,  I  should  not  feel  free  to  carry  you 
all  off  into  downright  Ritualism,  if  I  could ;  but  I  do  feel  free  to 
give  you  some  liturgical  and  ceremonial  exhortations,  it  having  been 
unanimously  agreed  even  by  Congregational  churches,  that  cere- 
mony and  order,  in  some  kind  and  measure,  are  both  necessary  and 
wholesome. 

I  think  that  my  individualistic  theorizings  went  a  long  way  to 
make  me  an  enemy  of  ceremonies.  If  my  personal  relations  to 
God  make  the  whole  of  religion  for  me,  and  all  associational  relig- 
ious life  is  a  profane  intermeddling  with  my  sacred  privacies,  of 
course  public  religion  and  ceremonies  are  out  of  the  question,  for 
they  are  associational ;  they  are  a  combination  of  numbers  of  per- 
sons to  do  certain  things  together,  in  the  same  place,  and  at  the 
same  time  ;  their  being  in  them  throughout  an  implication  that 
religion  is  as  much  a  man  ward  thing  as  a  Godward.  When  we 
move  in  ceremonies,  (I  speak  of  religious  ceremonies)  we  are  after 
three  things ;  we  seek  the  benefit  to  ourselves  of  self-expression ; 
we  seek  the  benefit  to  ourselves  of  the  united  expression  of  others, 
by  word  or  act  or  both  ;  in  our  presence  ;  and  we  seek  a  benefit  for 
others  in  the  same  two-fold  way,  they  expressing  themselves  each 
one  and  having  the  good  of  it,  and  at  the  same  time  having  the 
12 


170  YALE  LECTURES. 

immense  good  of  seeing  and  hearing  all  the  rest.  In  all  this  action 
and  interaction  there  is  a  combined  movement  on  God,  to  be  sure, 
and  a  responsive  movement  on  his  part ;  but  what  I  expressly  wish 
to  bring  out  is  the  intensely  social  and  corporate  character  of  all 
ceremonializing.  It  is  as  completely  opposed  to  individualism  in  its 
absolute  form,  as  anything  can  be  ;  and  in  so  far  as  a  man  is  indi- 
vidual and  insular,  he  must  abhor  ceremonies  ;  and  even  Quakerism, 
with  its  silentness,  is  too  ceremonious  for  him. 

Another  dissuasive  from  ceremonials  which  had  much  strength 
with  me,  as  it  has  with  millions  more,  was  the  tendency  of  such 
things  to  Formalism  ;  that  instinctive  make-shift  of  the  human  soul 
when  it  would  ( seem  pious  without  being  it.  I  thought,  the  more 
ceremony  is  amplified,  the  more  inevitably  will  formalism  get  in — 
so  that  our  only  safety  is  to  back  off  from  the  whole  thing  into 
speechlessness,  and  non-expression,  so  far  as  practicable.  Particu- 
larly in  the  case  of  ministers,  I  said  that  ceremonies  full,  sonorous, 
and  spectacular,  must  be  disadvantageous.  They  (the  ministers) 
stand  at  the  head  of  the  multitude,  the  major-generals  of  the  occa- 
sion, their  voice  leading  all  the  voices,  their  pantomime  leading  all 
the  pantomimes,  and  they  swollen  with  the  same  feeling  that  a  rud- 
der must  have  when,  by  the  least  motion  of  its  own  little  self,  the 
great  bulk  of  the  great  ship  is  made  to  sway.  And  I  think  even 
yet  that  there  is  a  considerable  force  of  self-consciouness  and  strut 
in  this  officialism,  if  the  minister  does  not  look  out  for  himself.  I 
have  felt  it  in  the  plain  and  modest  liturgies  and  pomps  of  my  own 
congregation. 

Another  thing  that  condemned  ceremonials  for  me,  was  their 
unwieldiness  when  we  want  to  move  out  aggressively  upon  the  mas- 
ses, the  non-church  goers,  and  the  mighty  multitudes  and  majori- 
ties who  have  never  been  schooled  in  ceremonies,  do  not  know 
their  meanings,  and  look  upon  them  therefore  as  an  elaborated 
pomposity  in  the  main. 

Also  I  was  averse  to  ceremonials,  because  I  was,  soul,  body 
and  spirit,  part  and  parcel  of  a  democratic  social  order.  In  a  state 
of  society  where  the  theory  is,  and  the  feeling  is,  that  one  man  is  as 
good  as  another,  it  is  unavoidable  that  ceremoniousness  between 
man  and  man  will  decline  ;  manners  will  simplify ;  obeisances,  saluta- 
tions and  the  innumerable  forms  of  elaborate  respect,  will  be 
abridged ; — officials  will  be  inaugurated  in  simple  ways,  and  after 
they  are  inaugurated  will  not  be  hedged  about  by  awful  observances ; 


YALE  LECTURES.  171 

they  can  be  approached  without  a  half  hour  spent  in  formalities, 
and  they  can  be  spoken  to  in  ordinary  respectable  English  and 
even  in  slang  if  the  visitor  does  not  know  any  better,  rather  than  in 
the  inflated  adulation  of  an  Oriental  court ;  while  the  costume 
you  wear  on  the  august  occasion,  may  be  according  to  your  own 
fancy  pretty  much. 

Well,  in  this  decadence  of  stateliness  and  high-wrought  gen- 
tility and  formalism,  under  the  influence  of  the  democratic  idea, 
the  people  fall  out  of  the  habit  of  ceremony  and  the  relish  of  it, 
so  that  even  when  they  pass  into  the  field  of  religion  and  approach 
the  Most  High  God,  and  make  up  rounds  of  worship  wherein  they 
shall  operate  together  in  congregations  and  in  multitudes,  they  dis- 
incline to  detail,  copiousness,  resonance  and  pomp  ;  and  trust  to  a 
few  plain  things. 

If  any  of  you,  my  Brethren,  are  cordially  averse  to  ceremony, 
I  presume  you  have  felt  now,  as  I  have  passed  on  in  the  explana- 
tions, that  I  was  touching  the  depths  of  your  case.  Very  well,  how 
did  I  get  out  of  these  depths.  I  think  that  being  a  minister,  and 
being  compelled  to  speak  and  act  and  officiate,  and  go  on  parade 
sometimes,  whether  I  wanted  to  or  no,  (as  at  weddings  for  example), 
demoralized  me  somewhat  and  made  me  feel  that  creatures  of  sense 
may  reasonably  indulge  in  a  spare  amount  of  form.  What  was  said 
of  error,  may  be  said  of  ceremonies  : — 

Seen  too  oft,  familiar  with  her  face, 

We  first  endure,  then  pity,  then  embrace. 

And  this  movement  of  mine  was  assisted  by  the  plain  failure 
before  my  eyes  of  individualism,  when  applied  to  life.  I  saw  that 
individualism  amounts  to  the  dissolution  of  society  and  a  practi- 
cal nullification  of  the  second  great  commandment : — "  Thou  shalt 
love  thy  neighbor  as  thyself."  It  cannot  be  defended.  Moreover, 
I  saw  that  all  Christian  bodies  had  consented  to  ceremony  and  were 
in  it ; — some  of  them  all  over, — so  that  the  question  : — "  Shall  we 
have  ceremony?  "  has  been  decided  by  the  common  sense  of  man- 
kind ;  the  sanctified  common  sense  and  the  unsanctified ;  the  only 
question  remaining  to  discuss  being  the  quantity  and  the  quality  ot 
the  thing.  The  only  Christians  that  undertake  not  to  consent  to 
ceremony  are  the  Quakers ;  and  with  what  success  I  will  answer. 
The  two  forms  in  which  ceremony  embodies  itself  are,  words  and 
gestures  or  acts,  said  words  and  gestures  being  assisted  to  be  all 
they  can  be  by  our  various  surroundings.     Our  Quaker  brethren  have 


172  YALE  LECTURES. 

gone  in  on  those  two  points  with  all  their  might  and  have  given  us 
public  services  without  architecture  and  the  colors  of  art,  without 
ecclesiastical  costume,  without  music,  without  formal  and  united 
acts,  and  often  without  one  word  spoken ;  nevertheless  I  never  felt 
myself  under  such  an  incubus  of  ceremoniousness  as  in  their  assem- 
blies. In  the  first  place,  their  worship  is  evidently  a  prescribed 
thing ;  no  such  result  as  that  worship  of  theirs  could  come  of  any- 
thing but  a  conspiracy ;  and  the  moment  a  service  is  prescribed,  it 
begins  to  take  on  a  formal  character.  Let  one  of  our  Congrega- 
tional churches,  accustomed  to  worship  in  the  unpompous  old- 
fashioned  way,  do  so  simple  a  thing  as  to  print  its  order  of  service 
and  put  it  in  the  pews,  thus  notifying  mankind  that  it  has  an  order, 
and  does  not  move  in  pure  spontaneity ;  and  that  act  is  distinctly 
formalizing  in  its  influence.  It  originated  in  an  increase  of  the 
liturgical  spirit  in  that  church  and  it  fosters  that  spirit.  So  the 
Quakers.  That  service  of  theirs  is  carefully  and  rigidly  fore- 
ordained ;  and  you  feel  that  it  is  fore-ordained  all  through  you, 
when  you  sit  in  it ;  and  you  are  ritualized  to  that  extent.  That,  in 
the  first  place,  I  say. 

Next,  while  they  repudiate  vestments,  they  are  costumed  in  an 
almost  more  than  fore-ordinated  uniform  ; — a  religious  uniform, 
because  although  they  wear  it  on  all  social  occasions  yet  it  is  put 
on  from  a  religious  impulse  and  for  religious  purposes,  as  much  so 
as  the  solemn  robes  of  a  nun. 

Next,  they  are  massed  in  their  meeting-house  in  a  certain 
noticeable  order,  men  together  and  women  together,  and  dignitaries 
together  always ;  as  much  ordered,  thus  and  so,  as  the  guests  at  a 
state  dinner  with  a  king.  And  those  artificial  rows  of  human 
beings  work  an  effect  on  the  mind  of  a  sensitive  beholder  precisely 
like  the  effect  of  that  elaborated  action  which  you  see  in  ritualistic 
assemblies. 

And  next,  their  silences  are  immensely  vocal,  so  far  as  all  the 
ends  of  impression  are  concerned ; — and  are  meant  to  be.  They 
are  a  powerful  preaching  of  their  particular  doctrine  of  the  Inner 
Light ;  that,  at  least.  I  do  not  think  of  any  way  in  which  it  could 
be  better  preached  than  by  resolutely  sitting  still  and  waiting  for  it. 
They  thus  eloquently  say  : — God  in  the  mind  is  indispensable,  and 
all  utterance  on  religion  without  him  is  mere  human  forwardness 
and  very  near  an  awful  crime  ;  moreover,  to  have  God  in  the  mind 
is  feasible  and  to  be  looked  for.     That  is  very  loud  doctrine,  even 


YALE  LECTURES.  173 

if  they  adopt  a  silent  form  of  saying  it.  I  beg  you  to  believe  that 
I  do  not  say  these  things  as  disposed  to  fault  that  excellent  body  of 
Christians.  I  am  only  earnest  to  show  that  non-ceremoniousness 
may  put  itself  forth  in  a  powerfully  ceremonious  manner,  and  may 
even  get  to  itself  the  whole  essence  of  formalism  in  a  formal,  com- 
bined effort  to  put  formalism  down.  I  believe  that  is  often  done  ; — 
and  not  alone  among  Quakers. 

Here  I  am  liable  to  be  asked  : — Why  should  we  desire  to 
increase  Form,  if  the  whole  effect  of  Form  can  be  secured  under 
usages  uncomplex  and  bare,  as  in  the  case  of  Quakers.  To  that  I 
reply  : — There  are  many  truths  and  many  feelings  that  cannot  be 
expressed  by  a  silent  sitting  in  premeditated  rows,  and  other  like 
simplicities.  Neither  can  we  get  full  expression  for  our  myriad- 
minded  selves,  even  through  words,  to  whatever  extent  they  are 
multiplied.  A  great  advance  in  expression  is  made  when  words  are 
joined  to  music  and  they  together,  carry  a  theme.  I  am  not 
going  to  say  anything  against  the  possibilities  of  expression  and 
impression  that  are  in  preaching ;  but  I  have  been  made  to  know  a 
thousand  times  in  my  own  experience  that  music  can  beat  us  all, 
especially  in  its  play  on  the  feelings  and  in  its  power  to  voice  the 
feelings. 

But  in  addition  to  words  and  music,  we  need  ceremonial 
actions  and  routines  of  action,  in  order  to  a  really  complete  formu- 
lation of  ourselves  and  a  full  stroke  on  our  sensibilities.  The  Inner 
Light  is  profoundly  worth  preaching,  but  so  are  the  Incarnation, 
and  the  Cross,  and  the  Resurrection,  and  Regeneration,  and  a  score 
more  ;  and  they  never  get  preached  in  their  full  strength  and  with 
its  own  proportionate  emphasis  on  each  one,  except  through  a  cere- 
monial that  has  variety,  and  amplitude  and  the  completeness  of 
real  art.  You  do  not  like  to  have  me  speak  that  word  Art  in  con- 
nection with  worship,  but  I  speak  it  because  I  know  that  expression 
is  an  art,  and  in  any  case  where  expression  is  not  thoroughly  artistic 
in  the  sense  of  thoroughly  conformed  to  the  established  laws  of  art, 
in  its  structure  and  organization,  as  also  even  in  so  secondary  and 
superficial  a  matter  as  its  ornamentation,  if  it  has  any,  there  is  a 
failure  as  respects  those  great  substantial  uses  which  expression  seeks 
to  secure. 

These  are  some  of  the  reasons  why  I  have  come  to  see  some 
sense  in  ceremony.  Being  a  religious  official  I  had  to  see  some 
sense  in  it,  or  leave  the  ministry.     Being  brought  to  see  that  indi- 


174  YALE  LECTURES. 

vidualism,  as  I  held  it,  was  practically  un-Christian,  and  that  asso- 
ciated worship  is  as  important  as  private  worship,  there  was  nothing 
left  for  me  but  to  fall  into  the  ceremonies  by  which  alone  associated 
worship  can  formulate  itself;  especially  in  any  complete  and  bal- 
anced formulation.  Being  brought  to  see  that  the  minimum  of 
form  does  not  necessarily  imply  the  minimum  of  Formalism,  and 
that  ample  Form  does  not  necessarily  imply  a  corresponding  ampli- 
tude of  Formalism,  but  that  we  may  have  Formalism  in  its  entire 
spirit,  its  entire  self-obfuscation,  pride,  and  curse,  under  a  ritual 
whose  one  boast  and  joy  is  that  it  is  not  a  ritual  at  all;  being  brought 
to  see  these  things  demonstrated  in  life,  and  demonstrated  by  rea- 
sonings on  the  motive  of  the  case,  as  well  as  readings  in  the  Bible, 
I  was  not  disobedient  to  my  light,  but  succumbed ;  and  there  stay. 

As  to  the  unwieldiness  of  an  expanded  ritual  for  purposes  of 
propagandism  among  the  un-Christianized,  all  I  have  to  say  is  that 
those  Christian  bodies,  if  there  be  any  which  will  not  go  out  to  the 
battles  of  the  Lord  except  as  accoutred  just  so  always,  must  suffer 
the  disadvantage  of  their  own  stiffness.  I  am  not  familiar  with  all 
communions,  but  I  have  an  idea  that  Romanism,  with  all  its  devo- 
tion to  externalism  and  precision,  has  generalship  enough  to  limber 
itself  to  the  circumstances  of  almost  any  situation,  so  that  while  in 
St.  Peter's  she  will  give  you  a  first-class  specimen  of  ritual,  with  all 
possible  accessories  for  the  eye  and  the  esthetic  sense,  she  will  also 
on  occasion  strip  herself  of  these  and  stand  out  bare  in  fighting 
trim,  absolutely  unencumbered  and  athletic.  When  I  was  in  her 
queen  city,  Rome,  Sunday  after  Sunday  in  the  afternoons,  I  heard 
her  much  praised  orator,  Father  Tom  Burke,  address  a  large  assem- 
bly in  English,  on  the  points  of  controversy  between  Romanism 
and  Protestantism  ; — and  I  recollect  this  admirable  fact,  that  the 
time  spent  in  ritualizing  us  was  not  so  long  as  a  good,  solid  Con- 
gregational long  prayer.  At  the  end  of  that  brief  prelude  the  priest 
went  into  the  pulpit  and  argued  with  us  for  an  hour.  That  was 
sense.  We  were  not  there  and  were  not  invited  there  to  see 
Romanism  in  the  full  glory  of  her  ceremonial,  but  to  be  labored 
upon  by  the  reason,  and  Father  Burke  confined  himself  to  the  busi- 
ness of  the  occasion.  Let  us  have  ceremony,  but  let  us  be  all 
things  to  all. 

With  respect  to  the  dislike  of  ceremony  among  democratic 
peoples ;  while  the  decline  of  ceremony  between  man  and  man 
may  be  admissible,  on   the  ground  that  ranks  are   abolished  and 


YALE  LECTURES.  175 

every  man  is  as  important  as  his  neighbor ,  surely  it  is  no  inconsist- 
ency to  magnify  ceremonial,  when  we  come  to  Him  to  whom  all 
earthly  personages  are  less  than  nothing  and  vanity. 

You  have  noticed  thus  far  that  while  I  have  shown  myself  not 
unfavorable  to  ceremony,  I  have  not  undertaken  to  make  precise 
statements  as  to  the  amount  of  it  that  we,  non-liturgical  people, 
were  well  better  admit.  My  opinion  is,  that  there  is  a  preparedness 
in  the  Congregational  mind  (let  me  speak  of  that  as  being  ac- 
quainted with  it)  for  a  ceremonial  advance  in  two  directions ; 
namely,  in  the  quality  of  what  ceremony  we  already  have,  and  in 
the  quantity' of  it.  Better,  and  more  of  it,  that  is  the  idea.  First, 
better. 

Under  that  head,  I  can  hardly  speak  my  whole  mind  without 
seeming  ungracious.  I  continually  admire  the  liturgical  success  of 
my  clerical  brethren  under  the  difficulties  of  their  situation.  The 
one  gigantic  difficulty  is  the  habitual. extemporization  to  which  they 
are  committed.  It  is  required  of  them — that  is,  the  ideal  of  Chris- 
tian worship  requires  of  them,  as  do  also  the  congregations  as  they 
advance  in  the  graces  of  civilization — that  they  make  their  worship- 
ful utterances  and  lead  the  people  in  lucid  English,  in  orderly 
English,  in  simple  English,  in  solid  English,  in  English  sufficiently 
copious  and  yet  not  jejune,  in  English  that  knows  how  to  stop  in 
ten  minutes  at  the  most  and  yet  that  can  in  that  time  sweep  the 
circuit  of  the  entire  creation ;  in  unrepetitious  English,  in  English 
that  while  it  is  standard  and  beyond  substantial  criticism,  is  so  far 
suffused  with  the  personality  of  the  author,  his  thought  and  his  feel- 
ing, that  it  is  fresh  and  relishable  ;  in  English  that  recollects  both 
God  and  the  congregation,  but  in  recollecting  the  congregation  does 
not  succumb  and  make  a  speech  instead  of  a  prayer ;  in  English  that 
ranges  the  entire  assembly  sympathetically  and  gathers  up  the 
thoughts  of  many  hearts  and  the  burdens  of  many  souls  and  car- 
ries the  whole  to  the  Heavenly  Father  in  a  true  intercession  ;  in  an 
English,  in  short,  which  no  mortal  ever  spoke  extemporaneously, 
except  in  good  moods  and  in  good  wafts  of  the  Holy  Spirit.  And 
even  then .  the  moods  and  wafts  may  be  so  good  as  to  carry  him 
along  into  an  affluence  which  seems  redundant  and  protracted  to 
unsympathetic  sinners.  The  demand  for  the  best  is  growing,  I  say. 
The  real  best — not  the  artificial  best.  No  slovenliness  of  utterance. 
No  bad  grammar.  No  untasteful  allusions.  No  words  with  over- 
mundane  associations  clinging  to  them.     No  colloquialisms.     No 


176  YALE  LECTURES. 

free-and- easiness  in  the  presence  of  the  Most  High.  No  senti- 
mentalism  of  religious  affection.  No  windiness  of  self-conscious 
rhetoric.  No  listening  to  the  modulations  of  your  own  voice.  No 
rages,  as  though  you  could  not  hold  in  your  own  Godly  emotions. 
No  dreariness  and  soliloquizing  instead  of  praying.  No  lashing 
yourself  up  to  a  hypocritical  animation.  No  personalities.  No 
photographic  description  of  all  the  virtues  of  the  deceased  in  your 
prayer  at  funerals,  and  no  extended  recognition  of  all  his  relatives. 

And  while  you  are  careful  of  your  speech,  you  must  be  careful 
how  you  act.  I  saw  Mr.  Spurgeon  officiate  at  the  Lord's  Supper, 
seated  throughout  and  with  his  two  legs  lifted  into  a  neighboring 
chair.  I  did  not  ask  him  whether  it  was  the  gout  that  did  that,  or 
his  preliminary  few  words  of  talk  on  the  fact  that  Christ's  last  Pass- 
over was  a  familiar  meal  whereat  the  participants  half  reclined.  I 
do  not  criticise  him ;  but  you  must  behave,  where  you  are  master  of 
ceremonies.  I  was  at  an  ornate  and  numerous  wedding  in  a  church 
where  the  officiating  minister  stood  eater-cornered  to  the  bride  and 
groom,  instead  of  in  absolute  face-to-face.  He  should  have  been 
more  ceremonious.  Perhaps  he  did  not  like  the  very  considerable 
show  before  him  and  took  that  way  to  say  so.  Perhaps  he  had 
been  wont  to  assume  irregular  attitudes  in  his  pulpit,  by  way  of  get- 
ting himself  into  liberty.  Perhaps  he  did  not  care  how  he  stood, 
and  having  happened  to  strike  that  sidelong  position  at  the  begin- 
ning, kept  it ;  a  little  thing.     But  we  had  better  care. 

I  was  told  of  a  Congregational  minister  who  would  place  his 
hat  on  the  communion  table  always  when  he  passed  into  the  pulpit, 
and  of  a  remote  deacon  (a  Baptist  he  happened  to  be)  who  was 
seen  to  bring  the  bread  of  communion  to  the  church  in  his  pocket 
handkerchief  and  cut  it  with  his  jack-knife  ;  and  I  have  officiated 
in  a  few  churches  where,  when  I  said  let  us  pray,  to  my  amaze- 
ment almost  no  one  bowed,  so  little  sense  of  ceremony  had  the 
Christians  there  ;  all  of  which  cases  and  forty  more  I  would  men- 
tion as  strong  illustrations  of  what  unceremoniousness  or  lack  of 
the  ceremonial  feeling  may  lead  to.  The  gravity  of  these  misde- 
meanors lies  right  there,  in  their  lack  of  ceremonial  feeling.  The 
minister  who  liked  to  have  his  hat  stand  on  the  consecrated  table 
and  who  was  driven  out  of  his  parish,  at  last,  in  a  quarrel  that 
started  in  that  persistent  act  of  his,  was  not  a  sacramentalist,  you 
may  be  sure ;  he  did  not  believe  in  Formalism  but  in  a  spiritual 
religion.     What  is  a  table  ? — so  much  wood  fashioned  into  a  certain 


YALE  LECTURES.  177 

shape  by  a  carpenter ; — and  what  are  bread  and  wine  and  why 
should  there  be  any  particular  parade  over  them  ?  What  they  sig- 
nify is  important,  but  they  are  simply  bread  and  wine,  and  no  act 
of  any  official  can  make  them  more  than  that.  So  ran  his  mind 
doubtless,  and  any  act  of  minor  irreverence  which  he  committed, 
was  a  growth  from  his  unceremonialism.  Not  every  unceremonial- 
ist  will  violate  decorum  and  come  short  of  the  full  ideal  in  his 
ceremonial  ministrations,  in  really  gross  ways ;  but  in  lesser  ways 
they  all  are  apt  to  fail.  Many  men  have  not  the  ceremonial  instinct 
in  them  strong  enough  to  really  get  into  the  meaning  of  a  service, 
— and  if  they  are  not  thus  in  the  service  they  are  sure  to  blunder 
in  conducting  it.  Take  prayer.  Prayer  has  in  it  certain  essential 
elements.  It  is  made  up  of  confession,  intercession,  and  kindred 
ideas,  and  the  minister  knowing  that,  has  a  perpetual  guide  in  his 
public  outpourings ;  and  while  in  any  given  prayer  he  may  press 
confession,  or  thanksgiving,  or  some  other  one  part,  more  than  he 
does  the  other  parts  ;  take  him  year  by  year,  he  is  sure  not  to  vio- 
late the  proportions  of  things  and  lead  his  people  in  the  line  of  a 
one-sided  culture.  He  knows  what  prayer  is,  constituently,  and 
thus  his  knowledge  of  the  ideal  is  his  constant  safeguard. 

Or  take  a  whole  service,  in  its  many  particulars.  Those  par- 
ticulars are  to  be  thrown  in  together  in  some  sort  of  order,  but  why 
in  one  order  more  than  another  ?  Why  should  the  sermon  come 
here,  and  not  there  ?  If  there  are  three  or  four  prayers  in  the  ser- 
vice, how  should  they  differ  from  each  other?  Should  they  differ 
at  all  ?  Should  a  Christian  service  move  towards  a  climax,  like  that 
supreme  and  awful  moment  in  the  Roman  mass  when  the  Host  is 
elevated  ?  Is  there  any  natural  crisis  in  our  communion  service,  or 
any  gradation  of  interest  whatsoever — or  shall  we  strike  the  major 
chord  of  the  occasion,  and  strike  it  with  all  our  might,  when  we 
first  open  our  lips,  and  spend  the  rest  of  the  hour  in  just  a  tiresome 
reiteration  of  that  main  stroke  ? 

So  in  a  wedding.  What  is  a  wedding?  We  stand  up  and 
some  transaction  is  to  be  gone  through  with.  What  we  are  after  is 
plain  enough.  We  intend  to  make  that  man  before  us,  and  that 
woman,  one  for  life.  But  that  end  is  to  be  made  sure  by  a  certain 
complex  formality ;  quite  complex,  if  it  be  looked  into  enough. 
What  are  those  complexities — exactly  ?  A  prayer  is  to  come  in, 
one  or  more,  probably.  Well,  how  much  of  possible  prayer  shall  be 
let  into  that  prayer?     Shall  you  spread  abroad  upon  the  general 


178  YALE  LECTURES. 

themes  of  the  Christian  Salvation?  Some  officiators  seem  to  feel 
that  all  the  great  topics  they  may  omit,  are  thereby  dishonored.  So 
they  aim  always  to  at  least  allude  to  those  momenta,  no  matter  what 
the  occasion  nor  how  specifically  limited.  And  that  is  the  reason 
that  prayers  on  express  occasions  are  often  so  enormously  spun  out. 

I  once  saw  a  minister  baptize  a  child ;  and  what  did  he  do  ? 
Do?  As  near  nothing  as  possible.  I  suppose  he  baptized  it, 
because  he  sprinkled  the  little  head  with  water  and  repeated  the 
customary  Triune  sentence.  And  he  did  offer  a  prayer  one  minute 
in  length.  But  he  spoke  the  formula  and  he  spoke  the  prayer  in 
a  tone  that  had  no  atmosphere  about  it,  it  was  as  bare  of  sugges- 
tiveness  and  magnetism  as  the  human  voice  could  be  when  recit- 
ing a  table  of  statistics.  I  say,  that  minister  had  not  studied  the 
significance  of  infant  baptism  and  gone  into  the  subject  so  that  he 
could  see  it  from  the  inside,  the  vast  inside.  If  he  had,  he  would 
have  swelled  a  little  and  vibrated ;  and  not  merely  would  he  have 
personally  dilated,  but  he  would  have  been  inclined  to  swell  his 
ceremony  most  likely,  by  certain  quite  feasible  additions.  Suppos- 
ing he  had  called  on  his  choir  to  chant : — "  Suffer  little  children  to 
come  unto  me  and  forbid  them  not ;  "  or  supposing  he  had  himself 
read  that  passage.  Supposing  he  had  said  a  few  words  to  the 
parents.  Supposing  he  had  expanded  his  curt  prayer  to  include 
the  undeniable  items  and  ground  facts  of  child-baptism.  Supposing 
he  had  Romanized  the  occasion  to  the  extent  of  half  a  dozen  inno- 
cent little  particulars  which  I  might  name,  winding  up  with  a  suita- 
ble shout  from  the  choir — yes  a  shout :  "  Glory  be  to  the  Father, 
and  to  the  Son,  and  to  the  Holy  Ghost !"  For  what  in  all  life  more 
deserves  to  be  shouted  over,  than  such  a  scene  as  that,  with  its 
unutterable,  tender  and  glorious  implications. 

What  I  am  insisting  on  all  along  here  is,  that  ministers  need 
to  perceive  the  real  contents  of  a  service  or  ceremony  before  they 
can  be  trusted  to  conduct  it.  Except  as  they  grasp  the  rationale 
of  it,  they  are  likely  to  mar  it,  any  minute.  They  put  in  imperti- 
nences, or  leave  out  pertinences,  or  shackle  along  under  the  law  of 
haphazard,  or  their  movement  is  a  hitchetty-hitch  when  it  should 
be  flowing.  How  much  there  is  in  that  last !  A  service  often  will 
have  pauses  in  it  and  misjoints  that  amount  to  breaks  and  jolts 
and  are  to  you  like  riding  over  a  rough  road ; — the  clergyman  and 
his  choir  do  not  lap  on  to  each  other  perfectly  j — he  does  a  thing, 
and  then  they  do  something,  and  then  he  does  something  else,  and 


YALE  LECTURES.  179 

the  transitions  from  thing  to  thing  are  jerky ;  whereas  they  ought 
to  be  like  the  silent  flow  of  curves.  Or  the  minister  and  the  peo- 
ple, take  up  the  Psalter  responsively  and  the  two  do  not  seem  to  be 
in  the  same  key  of  feeling ;  they  operate  independently  of  each 
other ;  he  and  they  responding  should  make  a  melodious  oscilla- 
tion, whereas  it  is  crank-work  they  are  in,  more  nearly — and  he  is 
responsible  for  it ; — for  if  he  really  understood  his  service  and  had 
a  good  warm  ceremonial  consciousness  and  enjoyment  of  cere- 
mony, a  delight  in  seeing  it  move  according  to  its  own  instinct  (for, 
evermore,  ceremony  because  it  is  ceremony,  likes  to  move  off 
beautifully  and  impressively),  then  these  infelicities  in  his  service 
would  not  appear,  he  would  get  himself  and  his  choir  settled  to- 
gether in  a  close  co-ordination,  and  he  would  pull  his  people  out  of 
their  mechanicalism  by  the  inspiration  of  his  voice  and  the  elan  of 
his  leadership. 

Our  non-liturgical  churches  more  and  more  demand  these 
gifts  in  ministers — I  say  again.  They  want  their  traditional  forms 
made  the  most  of.  They  want  them  to  be  operated  in  a  cultivated 
manner.  It  is  as  easy  to  save  souls  in  the  use  of  good  English,  as 
bungling  English ;  in  the  use  of  good  taste  as  coarse  taste,  in  the 
enjoyment  of  an  ordered  and  commanding  ritual  as  in  the  enjoy- 
ment of  a  ritual  whose  pride  it  is  to  be  no  ritual,  but  spontaneity 
and  lawlessness. 

If  there  is  among  us  this  desire  that  our  inheritance  of  Forms 
be  used  in  the  best  manner,  it  is  to  be  looked  for  also  that  our  peo- 
ple will  tolerate  some  addition  to  our  old  forms.  I  believe  they 
will.  They  are  doing  it  in  many  churches.  They  are  ready  to 
make  a  great  deal  more  of  music  than  the  Fathers  did.  They  see, 
as  they  were  not  used  to,  that  music  is  a  substantial  element  in 
worship,  and  not  a  mere  decoration  and  a  dangerous  one.  The 
old  plain  hymn  tune  that  anybody  can  sing  is  good,  and  countless 
souls  have  been  helped  on  by  their  privilege  in  that  plain  work  ;  but 
music  that  nobody  can  sing  save  a  trained  vocalist,  may  also  be 
good — first-rate — and  if  the  choir  and  their  minister  can  start  a 
back-and-forth  between  them,  wherein  some  godly  theme  shall  be 
tossed  to  and  fro  in  a  manner  to  make  it  shine  and  show  all  its 
phases,  that  also  is  first-rate  and  fascinating ; — and  if  the  congrega- 
tion please  to  make  a  unison  movement  on  some  creed  that  they 
like,  or  on  the  Lord's  Prayer,  that  is  good ; — and  if  they  enjoy 
handling  the  scriptures  responsively,  there  is  no  hurt  in  that ; — and 


180  YALE  LECTURES. 

if  they  want  to  flush  the  ceremony  of  the  Holy  Supper  with  some 
new  colors  and  extend  its  particulars  till  they  fill  the  whole  time  of 
the  Sunday  morning,  as  feeling  that  a  rite  so  central  and  so  stocked 
with  holy  and  tender  meanings,  and  so  full  of  grace  for  sinful  men, 
will  bear  a  whole  morning  put  upon  it ;  very  well,  let  them  expand  ; 
there  is  nothing  uncongregational  in  that.  And  if  they  abjure  bar- 
ren baptisms,  both  infant  and  adult ; — and  if  in  this  advance  of 
ceremony  in  ordinary  worship  their  extraordinary  occasions  begin 
to  advance ;  their  weddings,  their  funerals,  their  dedications,  their 
anniversaries,  their  days  of  Easter  and  Christmas  and  the  like  ;  it  is 
no  wonder  and  who  can  prove  there  is  any  disadvantage  in  it  ?  I 
select  these  illustrations  from  what  I  have  seen  among  our  people 
in  these  latter  years.  I  was  at  a  communion  service  recently  in 
one  of  our  own  churches,  which  went  on  in  this  manner :  There 
were  various  exercises  of  a  general  nature,  which  consumed  more 
than  half  an  hour.  They  were  general,  as  not  taking  the  assembly 
into  the  very  heart  and  full  stress  of  the  Supper;  and  yet  they 
artfully  and  sweetly  preluded  the  Supper.  Then  the  minister 
descended  to  the  table  and  read  that  rich  passage  in  Isaiah  : — "  He 
was  despised  and  rejected  of  men,"  the  choir  chanting  the  alter- 
nate sentences  in  a  quiet  minor  movement ; — which  minor  move- 
ment rose  into  something  more  joyful  as  the  minister  led  on  into 
sentences  of  invitation  : — "  Come  unto  me  all  ye  that  labor  and  are* 
heavy  laden,"  and  the  like.  Then  a  short  address  was  read  from 
the  Communion  office  of  a  certain  branch  of  the  Christian  church, 
also  the  history  of  the  institution  of  the  Supper  from  the  same 
Office.  Then  an  extemporaneous  prayer  was  offered,  not  two  min- 
utes long ; — a  prayer  of  consecration  strictly.  It  could  be  thus 
brief  because  it  simply  asked  God  to  turn  those  natural  elements, 
there  offered  to  him,  to  a  divine  use.  Then  the  bread  was  broken 
and  distributed  in  silence ;  and  after  that,  while  the  minister  filled 
the  cup,  the  choir  chanted  in  a  subdued  and  refined  passage  :  "O, 
the  sweet  wonders  of  that  Cross,  where  my  Redeemer  loved  and 
died."  The  cup  was  passed,  and  then  the  minister  moved  forth 
into  a  large  and  free  range  of  prayer,  through  every  word  of  which 
though,  you  could  hear,  now  near  and  now  afar  off,  the  tone  of 
Christ's  mediatorial  passion.  There  was  a  considerable  mention  of 
persons  and  classes,  and  among  the  rest  an  express  commendation 
of  the  departed,  made  express  by  a  preliminary  noticeable  pause,  a 
dropping  of  the  voice,  and  a  use  of  the  beautiful  collect  for  All 


YALE  LECTURES.  181 

Saints'  Day  in  the  Protestant  Episcopal  Book  of  Common  Prayer. 
Then  all  stood  up  and  chanted  together  in  a  full,  unanimous  out- 
pouring, the  good  words  of  the  Gloria  in  Excelsis  ; — "  Glory  be  to 
God  on  high,  and  on  earth,  peace,  good  will  towards  men."  And 
the  service  closed  with  the  benediction. 

Now  let  alone  the  exact  philosophy  of  that  Order,  and  even 
admit  if  you  want  to,  that  it  was  untruly  organized  here  or  there, 
you  can  see  in  it  a  tendency  towards  ritual  liturgical  touches,  coy 
dallyings  with  Form,  longings  to  get  the  Supper  out  into  a  generous 
statement ; — and  you  can  see,  I  submit,  how  practicable,  harmless 
and  serviceable,  well-managed  dallyings  may  be.  And  this  kind 
of  thing  is  going  on  all  about,  and  is  permitted  to  go  on  and  will 
be  ;  and  you,  young  gentlemen,  are  going  out  into  this  world  to 
favor  it,  or  to  oppose  it.  My  hope  is  that  you  will  favor  it,  and 
direct  it  and  make  it  reasonable. 

I  have  indulged  myself  in  two  lectures  to  you  on  Imagination 
in  ministers,  as  theologians  and  as  sermonizers — I  hope  you  will  not 
feel  totally  worn  out  with  that  word,  if  I  gratify  myself  a  little  once 
more,  and  conclude  this  hour  with  the  thought  that  no  man  can 
manage  ceremony  as  it  deserves  to  be  managed,  except  as  he  enters 
into  it  imaginatively. 

Take  a  wedding.  The  atmosphere  of  the  occasion  requires 
some  suffusiveness  and  glow  on  the  part  of  the  minister ;  and  mag- 
nanimity— magnus,  animus — a  mind  sized  up  to  the  height  of  the 
hour.  Well,  how  shall  he  be  sized  up,  that  poor,  limited  mortal? 
In  one  way  only ; — by  a  solar  vision  of  the  tremendous  contents 
of  a  wedding.  The  flowers  and  the  music  and  the  gorgeous 
costumes,  and  the  showy  bridal  procession,  and  the  manifold 
pulsation,  are  a  brilliant  notice  served  on  him  that  the  occasion 
has  contents  ;  but  it  is  a  notice  addressed  to  his  imagination,  chiefly. 
It  is  an  occasion  of  delight,  of  anticipation,  of  memory,  too,  of 
uncertainty,  of  solemn  and  tender  certainty ;  the  whole  preceding 
life  of  the  parties  concerned  is  in  it  and  their  whole  coming  life 
and  their  eternity ;  there  is  in  it  their  youthful  view  of  the  act  and 
also  the  parental  view,  also  the  rather  numerous  views  of  the  emo- 
tional spectators  manifested  in  nameless  out-bubblings,  great  and 
small ; — it  is  a  time  of  delights  and  it  is  a  time  of  tears ; — and  a 
clergyman  who  stands  in  front  of  all  this,  without  the  faculty  to 
read  these  glittering  signs  and  signals  hung  out,  without  the  faculty 
to  enter  realistically  into  the  feelings  of  the  parties  and  all  parties, 


182  YALE  LECTURES. 

and  create  the  occasion  from  the  interior,  is  a  sad  piece  of  insuffi- 
ciency. He  may  make  some  observations,  he  may  proceed  to  invent 
a  prayer  produced  from  the  depths  of  his  own  unperceiving  mind,  a 
prayer  born  of  hearsay  as  to  what  it  probably  ought  to  be  at  such  a 
time ;  or  he  may  assist  himself  by  a  printed  ceremony  which  he 
reads  ;  but  all  he  does  fails  to  rhyme  with  the  surroundings  \ — he  is 
outside  of  the  surroundings,  and  they  are  outside  of  him ; — he  is 
Mr.  Gradgrind  consciously  discharging  a  function,  but  this  specta- 
cle has  no  Gradgrind  element  in  it ;  his  tone  as  he  reads  that 
printed  page  is  literal  and  colorless,  and  the  liturgic  page  therefore 
is  outraged — what  are  those  old  offices  in  the  books,  in  reality? 
printer's  ink  and  white  paper  spread  out  ?  forms  of  far-away  hear- 
say? is  that  the  whole  account?  No.  In  these  carefully  preserved 
and  dear  forms,  we  have,  first,  a  pretty  entire  condensation  and 
practical  digest  of  the  main  realities  of  the  several  occasions  which 
they  profess  to  voice ;  and  besides  that,  a  sound  of  foregone  ages, 
a  mighty  murmur  of  assemblies  back  and  back,  tones  of  the  living, 
tones  of  the  dead,  holy  offices  are  they  verily,  most  plural,  plenary, 
mystical  and  immeasurable,  and  the  voice  of  the  clergyman  who 
officiates  in  them  must  in  some  measure  show  this  plenitude  of 
things,  else  they  are  robbed,  and  a  wedding  or  a  funeral,  or  any- 
thing else,  that  tries  to  get  itself  spoken  forth  through  them  is 
defeated  and  comes  forth  in  insufferable  abridgements,  mutilations, 
and  unvoluminous  and  unrotund  pretenses  of  utterance.  So  have  I 
myself  heard  these  forms  dishonored  by  individual  clergymen, 
even  in  liturgical  churches ; — and,  parallel  to  this,  I  have  heard 
extemporized  forms  made  to  labor  in  the  same  disability ;  the  fun- 
damental infirmity  in  the  whole  business  being  that  the  clergyman 
could  not  be  a  bit  inflamed  in  his  imagination. 

It  might  seem  that  an  occasion  so  sombre  as  a  funeral,  does  not 
give  much  range  for  this  bright  faculty,  these  visions,  and  these  crea- 
tive flights.  Imagination  is  not  a  bright  faculty,  any  more  than 
memory  is,  or  reason,  or  conscience.  They  are  all  bright  or  dark, 
according  to  the  ranges  in  which  they  happen  to  be  called  to  fly. 
See  Dante,  see  Milton,  with  a  gravity  deep  as  the  grave,  when  treat- 
ing grave  things.  See  all  great  poets  when  they  address  themselves 
to  that  thing  of  glooms  and  gleams,  human  life.  The  truth  is,  Imag- 
ination is  essentially  serious  and,  in  her  utmost  blithesomeness,  there 
is  never  a  touch  of  levity.  A  funeral  has  its  imaginative  tokens,  its 
symbols  and  vocal  signs,  its  various  externals  very  stimulating  to  a 


YALE  LECTURES.  183 

perceiving  and  responsive  person  ;  and  it  were  long  to  tell  (too  long) 
into  what  realms  of  vastness  and  shadow  these  externals  lead  back ; 
— but  quite  as  much  into  realms  of  illumination  is  he  led  back  who 
has  the  faculty  to  be  led,  when  standing  by  the  dead  and  among 
the  sorrowful ;  and  an  unimaginative  mind  proclaims  itself  by  an 
excessive  and  monotonous  lugubriousness  in  these  scenes  of  lam- 
entation, as  often  as  in  any  other  way.  A  funeral  occasion  has  in 
it  certain  elements,  or  contents,  mixed  contents,  as  I  have  said ; 
and  the  secret  of  ceremonial  fulness,  propriety,  flow,  and  satisfying 
completeness  all  around,  is  just  to  get  at,  grasp,  and  master,  those 
elements.  In  full  possession  of  those  data,  in  conscious  and 
emotional  possession  of  them,  you  are  released  from  the  bondage  of 
fear,  fear  of  man,  fear  that  you  will  hurt  some  bleeding  heart,  fear 
that  you  will  make  some  infelicitous  allusion,  fear  that  some  word 
will  fall  from  you  that  is  not  in  absolute  taste,  fear  that  you  will 
express  yourself  more  joyfully  than  you  ought,  in  view  of  the  fact 
that  several  persons  just  about  you  are  not  joyful  at  all ; — and  when 
you  come  to  read  your  suitable  Scriptures,  you  interpret  them  in 
your  reading  according  to  their  greatness ;  by  your  cadence,  your 
in  and  out  of  inflection,  the  tranquil  warmth  and  fulness  of  your 
tone,  or  perchance  by  your  march  of  energy — by  all  those  subtle 
tokens  whereby  the  human  mind  declares  its  thoughts  and  emo- 
tions, with  their  innumerable  shadings  and  vicissitudes. 

What  I  have  said  of  weddings  and  funerals,  applies  to  all  cere- 
monies. Their  true  impressiveness  is  violated  if  you  do  not  use 
them  in  an  ideal  way.  The  Protestant  Episcopal  service  begins  : — 
"  Dearly  beloved  " — what !  all  those  undeveloped  and  miserably 
flawed  and  often  personally  disagreeable  saints  out  there  in  the 
assembly,  dearly  beloved  !  How  can  the  man  say  that !  Some  of 
them  are  dearly  beloved,  easily  enough.  Anybody  can  see  that. 
But  the  rest  of  them,  scattered  about !     How  can  he  ? 

That  is  good  reasoning,  is  it  not?  I  used  to  deal  with  that 
affectionate  expression  in  that  way,  and  many  do.  But  now  I  can 
say ; — dearly  beloved,  to  all  church  people  and  to  all  mankind,  and 
it  does  not  wrench  my  sincere  conscience,  at  all.  I  like  to  say  it. 
When  I  say,  dearly  beloved,  I  address  the  Church  ideal — I  speak  to 
those  imperfect  people  as  potentially  and  prophetically  perfect,  and 
perfectly  lovable,  by  the  inworking,  sure  grace  of  God.  I  imagi- 
natively impute  to  them  the  excellence  of  their  coming  better  day. 
I  see  them  in  Christ  Jesus  just  as  their  God  does.      I  address  Him 


184  YALE  LECTURES. 

in  them.  I  do  it  not  by  a  sophistication  of  my  own  faculties. 
Imputation  is  not  sophistication,  but  a  four-square  reality,  a  reality 
of  the  imagination,  a  valid,  instinctive,  and  inevitable  movement  of 
feeling. 

And  Christian  worship  is  full  of  these  imaginings ; — these 
glorious  and  glorifying  imaginings.  All  men  are  dearly  beloved  on 
the  same  principle.  Jesus  bore  them  all  in  his  own  body  on  the 
tree,  and  they  are  redeemed, — and,  seeing  them  as  redeemed,  I  can- 
not avoid  a  warmth  towards  them.  It  is  his  warmth  reproduced  in 
me  and  mine  is  as  valid  and  rational  as  his.  Jesus  loves  them  with 
a  love  of  pity  because  they  are  so  imperfect — that  is  so — but  he 
loves  them  with  a  love  of  admiration  also,  looking  forward  to  the 
beauty  of  holiness  to  which  they  may  come,  by  force  of  redemp- 
tion and  redeeming  grace.  I  might  show  you  this  same  instinctive 
play  of  ideality,  here  and  there,  through  the  whole  liturgy.  The 
service  corruscates  with  it.  And  it  is  the  one  thing  that  sustains 
ceremonial,  and  makes  it  other  than  a  hollow  thing.  When  Richard 
Cobden  died,  the  Earl  of  Beaconsfield,  in  the  English  House  of 
Commons,  delivered  a  memorial  eulogy  on  him — which  I  read  with 
admiration.  It  was  only  a  few  minutes  long,  but  it  rose  to  the 
occasion  as  no  other  speech  on  Cobden  then  and  there  did.  John 
Bright  tried,  but  his  grief  broke  him  down.  Beaconsfield  saw  Cob- 
den in  his  whole  magnitude  and  in  his  whole  remarkable  quality, 
and  he  saw  Cobden's  industrious,  manly,  and  fruitful  life ;  he  saw 
mourning  England ;  he  saw  the  great,  sad,  irreparable  vacancy  in 
the  world  made  by  that  death ;  and  in  masterly  vision  and  compre- 
hension, of  all  the  several  realities  of  the  occasion,  he  spoke ;  and 
the  utterance  was  adequate  and  memorable. 

There  are  many  things  that  we  call  occasions.  The  assembly 
in  our  National  House  of  Representatives,  in  memory  of  President 
Garfield,  when  Mr.  Blaine  spoke  so  well,  was  one.  When  Wash- 
ington bade  Congress  farewell  and  surrendered  his  sword,  there  was 
another.  When  Luther  met  the  Diet  at  Worms,  when  England  tried 
Warren  Hastings,  when  Lincoln  spoke  on  the  field  of  Gettysburg, 
when  Chalmers  and  his  friends  left  the  General  Assembly  of  Scot- 
land, when  Frederick  Robertson  looked  down  from  the  gallery  o 
the  theatre  at  Oxford  and  saw  William  Wordsworth  come  in  to 
receive  an  honorary  degree  in  a  tumult  of  the  multitude  that  almost 
shook  the  Island  :  these  were  occasions,  and  all  of  us  are  likely  to 
be  overtaken  by  such,  and  possibly  pushed  into  the  forefront  of 


YALE  LECTURES.  185 

them,  as  their  orator  or  their  master  of  ceremonies.  And  what  I 
say  is,  that  some  men  are  good  for  an  occasion,  and  some  are  not ; 
— those  that  are  being  made  so  (other  things  being  equal),  by 
their  large-minded,  high-minded,  fine-minded,  hundred-eyed,  intui- 
tive, ideal,  imaginative  comprehension  of  the  exact  facts  of  the 
moment.  And  religious  ceremonies  are  no  otherwise  than  secular 
ceremonies,  in  this  regard.  A  minister  at  the  sacred  table  needs 
just  Beaconsfield's  ability  to  enter  into  the  situation.  Some  men 
will  dedicate  a  church  in  a  manner  to  change  your  feeling  towards 
that  building  forever ; — or  they  will  excommunicate  a  church  mem- 
ber with  a  similar  impressive  ceremoniousness — or  they  will  receive 
a  deputation  or  address  an  outgoing  regiment  in  the  name  of  God  ; 
or  ordain,  a  deacon  ;  or  consecrate  a  field  of  graves,  or  welcome  a 
world's  Evangelical  Alliance,  or  voice  the  good-by  of  a  great  con- 
gregation looking  for  the  last  time  on  some  trans-Atlantic  visitor — 
as  when  Bishop  Simpson,  in  the  name  of  American  Methodism 
in  New  York  assembled,  poured  out  a  valedictory  on  Dean  Stanley 
— it  does  not  make  much  difference  what  they  are  called  to  (these 
ceremonial  men)  ;  they  know  how  to  distil  into  their  speech  the 
entire  spirit  of  the  hour,  with  its  multiplied  circumstances  ; — they 
may  be  very  simple,  they  may  be  robed  in  no  official  dress,  whether 
lawn,  powdered  wig,  cocked  hat,  or  priestly  stole,  they  may  read 
out  of  no  book,  but  out  of  their  mind  only ;  they  may  eschew 
sounding  titles  and  all  pomps  of  conventionality.  Nevertheless 
they  have  great  effect  on  all  witnesses,  as  having  visibly  gathered  up 
into  their  minds  whatever  goes  to  make  the  occasion  ; — gathered  it 
up  for  their  own  enlargement  at  the  moment  and  their  aggrandize- 
ment of  feeling,  and  for  the  ennoblement  of  their  diction. 

Great  is  this  gift  in  the  house  of  God.  Happy  is  the  man  who 
always  sees  and  feels  the  import  of  a  Christian  service.  Blessed 
is  he  who  cannot  be  staled  by  routine  ; — who  feels  the  pathos  of  his 
last  baptism  as  much  as  he  felt  the  pathos  of  his  first — and  more — 
who  never  goes  to  a  burial  but  the  whole  burden  of  it  and  the 
whole  consolation  are  on  him ;  who  officiates  at  the  Lord's  Supper 
for  the  ten  hundredth  time  with  the  tides  of  Calvary  in  undiminished 
flow  about  him ;  who  lifts  all  ceremony  into  the  ideal — who  takes 
whatsoever  of  noble  architecture,  or  noble  music,  or  pictorial 
beauty,  may  happen  to  surround  him  in  his  service,  and  weaves  it 
into  the  texture  of  his  feeling,  as  harmonious  with  his  soul's  holiest 
experiences  and  indeed  serviceable  thereto  ;  while  he  moves  before 
13 


186  YALE  LECTURES. 

his  people,  and  with  his  people,  in  the  endless  rounds  of  his  office ; 
simulating  in  little  and  so  far  as  he  may  that  other  and  perfect 
worship,  into  which  all  our  ceremonies  shall  merge  at  last. 


THE  RIGHT  CONDUCT  OF 
PUBLIC  WORSHIP. 


My  Brethren,  I  am  here  to-day  to  address  you  on  a  theme 
which  you  have  heard  discussed  before,  with  more  or  less  fulness,  I 
suppose.  Nevertheless,  I  speak  right  on,  as  knowing  that  the  multi- 
plication of  witnesses  on  any  given  point  of  truth  may  be  a  service- 
able thing,  especially  if  the  witnesses  have  had  a  good  deal  of 
experience  of  that  whereof  they  affirm,  and  out  of  their  experience 
have  managed  to  thoroughly  make  up  their  minds. 

You  will  observe  as  I  pass  forward,  that  I  understand  myself  to 
be  addressing  a  body  of  young  men,  the  larger  number  of  whom  by 
far  are  expecting  to  take  service  in  non-liturgical  churches,  churches 
of  the  sort  with  which  I  myself  have  been  connected  all  my  days  ; 
though  let  me  say,  I  shall  distinctly  avoid  any  special  comparison 
between  the  worship  of  our  churches  and  that  of  the  more  liturgical 
and  ritualistic  bodies.  I  have  almost  any  amount  of  fellowship  with 
them  and  could  discuss  their  ways  with  entire  candor  and  geniality, 
I  fancy ;  however,  I  do  not  feel  myself  called  to  that  on  this 
occasion. 

When  we  speak  of  Public  Worship,  we  mean  often  the  entire 
service  of  the  Sanctuary ;  but  I  shall  use  the  word  a  little  more 
strictly  to-day,  and  shall  exclude  the  sermon,  as  not  in  exact  defini- 
tion, worship.  The  sermon  is  a  subject  by  itself,  and  a  large  one 
too.  And  first,  let  me  consider  the  prayers,  of  which  in  our  usage, 
there  are  three  ; — the  invocation,  the  central  and  main  prayer  (often 
described  with  fearful  truth,  as  the  long  prayer,)  and  the  closing  one. 
And  concerning  these  three,  I  remark  to  begin  with  :  That  they 
should  be  kept  distinct — absolutely  so,  as  a  rule — in  the  minister's 


L8S 

I    s 
••  -    . 

ss 

- 

-  -  ,  5S       . 

- 

5 

- 

-       - 

-      ■ 

- 

- 

-  -  - 

-     - 

•■--■ 
- 

••  -      - 

v  '  ,   ;— \     --••■■;<  \- •;. ;.-••-  •     -    ^  -    -__-      .  ~    .  -      - 

-:.-.:-     -     '.-    '    -     .-.  •  "    .v    ",     ■     ::■•  V     ~;  :.-;  :";-  .:$.-.;-  v-.v  ;:. 
v  -•-■:    •:-    "c-.:v-..--.:.   .■     :-;  ~     :     ;>    ><-.v-r.i:;        ■.?■:.  _--       -; 

- 

■s  rat  arc  exorcdiaghr  wearisome  and 
nafttsonable..     AI  persons  wno  hare  a  siurp  dxsceninent  of  wtur  is 

-   .•--:  :  ;:  •  ;.cv.  ;     :---  v    /.>   -.-      .^  :  -;  .  ;    :       •  -    :  :-; 

-•■■,■ 
•■  - .     :    -:::-<.       /-;-.    :-;■     -::-;.:;     :    :;    :.-;:    -y~:   : .-.     ■;.    ;:" 

-    .    •      -  -  -         - 


(the 

Supper,  yet  the  in 

way  ;  and  a 

table  man 

• 
■!  hardly  jr. 
Call  tl 

■ 
phasis  irhich  could  be  endui 
tution  of  mu 
rvation,  it  unloads  impression  w.v  t,  and 

subsides  ini  .  ntain,  that  that 

broth  tatting  his  journey  at  fa 

J  do  not  lib 

of  dh  I  nave  said 

• 
failure.     •  of  oui 

worship  on  die  day  I  mention,  had  made  his  in 

sing  on  thai  ching 

vario  on  that  folio 

the  Holy  Supper,  but  had  spread   itself  in  general   praise,  or  had 

nday  as  the  day  of  the  resurrection  of  jar 
and  if  the  Jiiblical  Lesson  that  then  came  on  had  be  ..not 

from  the  ini  res  that  i - 

full  of  the  mediatorial  travail  of  the   Svn   of  God,)  but   n 

;d  at 
the  moment  of  approach  to  the  Supper ;  in  short,  if  our  leader  had 

.':  hour  held  us  a  little  off  from  the    pi  crisis 

of  thi  ..   in   various  preambling,   all   within   the   line 

Christian)-;.  -.nan  that  within  the  1::. 


190  YALE  LECTURES. 

interior  and  central  Christianity,  so  that  we  might  be  in  a  process  of 
real  preparation  for  the  feast ;  then  two  fundamental  things  would 
have  been  effectually  secured.  First,  that  underflowing  unity  which 
is  so  precious  in  any  service,  and  which  he  was  after  so  earnestly ; 
and  secondly,  that  unwasted  vigor,  that  full  and  fresh  play  of  faculty, 
on  the  part  of  the  congregation,  which  makes  the  Lord's  Supper  a 
heart-filling  and  strengthening  observance. 

Perhaps  some  of  you,  My  Brethren,  will  doubt  my  statement 
that  unity  in  a  service  is  secured  by  preamblings  that  do  not  come 
right  to  the  main  point.  Well,  look  at  the  great  Historical  Liturgies 
and  see  how  they  are  constructed.  This  notion  of  so  many  that  the 
sermon  is  the  great  feature  of  the  hour,  and  that  all  things  before  and 
after  must  chime  about  that,  and  from  that  get  their  color  and  tone, 
is  not  provided  for  in  the  Liturgies  ■  for  they  move  on  in  their 
diverse  exercises,  in  a  free,  multifold  and  unhindered  way,  as  though 
real  acts  of  worship,  though  they  be  of  a  general  nature,  were  a  good 
and  sufficient  preparation  of  the  heart  for  listening  to  any  sort  of 
sermon  that  deserves  to  be  preached.  Take  the  Prayer  Book  of  the 
Protestant  Episcopal  Church  and  observe  how  that  undertakes  to 
get  its  congregations  on  to  the  Lord's  Supper.  Why,  during  the 
first  hour,  more  or  less,  no  one  who  was  not  informed  beforehand, 
would  surmise  that  the  supper  was  coming  at  all ; — and  then,  when 
it  does  come,  the  first  stroke  of  the  ritual  is  as  far  off  as  the  reading 
of  the  ten  commandments  ;  then  comes  a  prayer,  also  far  off;  then 
the  collect  for  the  day,  which  may  have  a  special  flavor  of  Christ's 
Sacrifice  or  may  not,  just  as  it  happens ;  then  the  Epistle  and  the 
Gospel  for  the  day,  (for  the  day  you  notice,  and  not  for  the  sacra- 
mental occasion  ;)  then  a  Creed  is  read,  a  Creed  suitable  to  any 
service  of  course  ;  then,  after  a  little,  a  most  general  prayer  for 
the  Christian  church  is  offered  ; — and  finally,  after  all  this,  notes 
from  the  Holy  table  begin  to  break  in.  Now  I  do  not  stand 
here  to  eulogize  these  details  and  pronounce  them  perfect ;  but 
only  to  put  forth  the  observation,  that  the  great  liturgical 
bodies  of  Christendom  have  practically  expressed  themselves  to 
this  effect ;  that,  in  order  to  have  all  the  specific  acts  of  a 
Christian  service  proceed  upon  a  fundamental  tone,  and  in  that 
tone  have  their  perfect  unity,  and  therefore  their  utmost  impression, 
it  is  not  necessary  that  they  should  be  so  exceedingly  particularized 
as  my  friend  who  led  us  in  the  Communion  service  that  day  particu- 
larized.    And  I  have  no  doubt  that  this  great  consenting  judgment  is 


YALE  LECTURES.  191 

right,  and  that  any  practice  contrary  to  that  judgment  is  injurious. 

I  may  seem  to  you,  to  be  spending  a  good  deal  of  time  on  a 
minor  point,  just  here  ;  but  if  I  could  run  the  subject  out  into  all  its 
relations,  I  might  make  it  appear  less  minor  than  you  think.  If  we 
submit  ourselves  to  the  perpetual  drill  of  a  routine  which  is  unphil- 
osophically  organized,  we  may  save  our  souls,  to  be  sure  ;  but  we 
shall  be  insensibly  cheated  out  of  some  benefits  which  we  might  just 
as  well  have.  Indeed  I  think  there  are  forms  of  piety  in  the  world 
partially  disagreeable  and  unprofitable,  which  came  to  be  so  as  de- 
veloped under  this  theory  of  concentration  and  particularization, 
whereon  I  have  been  remarking.  Give  us  a  broad,  diversified 
rational  service  ;  and  not  too  much  music  on  one  string  for  the  sake 
of  impression.  My  remark  sometime  ago,  that  the  three  prayers  in 
our  service  should  be  kept  distinct,  led  me  to  speak  of  weariness  of 
mind  under  them  when  they  are  all  run  together  pretty  much,  and 
cover  the  same  ground  ;  and  from  that  I  was  induced  to  spend  a 
moment  on  the  weariness  and  lack  of  impression  of  a  service,  which 
in  its  endeavor  for  unity  makes  its  every  act,  beginning  with  the 
invocation,  sound  alike. 

And,  now,  still  confining  myself  to  the  prayers,  I  would  like  to 
consider  the  "  long  prayer,"  and  throw  out  some  hints  in  regard  to 
public  prayer  in  general. 

And  first,  while  you  keep  on  calling  the  long  prayer  "  long  "  if 
you  want  to,  do  you  be  very  watchful  that  it  never  deserves  that 
sonorous  adjective.  Soon  after  I  commenced  ministerial  service,  I 
was  told  of  a  neighboring  brother  who  prayed  fifteen,  twenty  and 
twenty-five  minutes,  almost  any  Sunday,  and  had  been  known  to 
go  as  high  as  thirty-five,  on  a  sufficiently  august  occasion.  I,  in  my 
inexperience,  lifted  up  my  hands  in  amazement.  I  could  not  see 
what  he  could  have  to  say  to  keep  him  so  long,  or  how  he  ventured 
to  call  the  congregation  to  an  effort  on  their  own  part  so  extended. 
But  in  less  than  four  years  I  was  wiser ;  and  found  that  I,  myself, 
was  almost  equally  affluent,  and  was  being  timed  by  brethren  who 
were  not  so  devout  but  that  they  could  look  at  their  watches  ;  and 
not  so  awe-struck  before  the  minister  but  that  they  could  tell  him 
of  it.  So  I  commenced  to  reform,  supposing  that  all  I  had  to  do 
was  to  say  the  word  to  myself  and  the  thing  was  done,  but,  behold  ! 
the  force  of  habit,  and  the  force,  too,  of  a  deep  interest,  intellectual 
and  other,  in  the  mighty  themes  of  prayer,  and  the  mighty  blessings 
which  prayer  goes  out  to  seek  ;  I  did  not  much  reform.     Good  reso- 


192  YALE  LECTURES. 

lutions  availed  little.  The  moment  I  closed  my  eyes  and  began, 
time  was  cheap.  However  much  it  might  be  worth  thinking  of,  as 
a  matter  of  fact  I  did  not  think  of  it,  or  at  least  not  enough  to 
frighten  myself  and  stop.  Then  I  undertook  praying  by  the  watch, 
putting  it  at  my  side,  looking  at  it  as  I  commenced,  and  looking  at 
it  again  as  I  closed ;  but  in  spite  of  everything,  it  registered  usually 
fifteen  minutes  or  more.  After  a  sufficient  trial  of  this,  I  made  up 
my  mind  to  deliberately  omit  numbers  of  things  which  really  belong 
in  any  full  prayer,  for  the  sake  of  getting  through.  I  would  sacrifice 
my  idea  of  prayer  and  work  in  only  a  fraction  of  its  rightful  con- 
tents, rather  than  destroy  my  prayer  altogether  as  an  exercise  for 
the  people,  by  making  it  burdensome ;  just  as  a  man  loads  so  many 
thousand  tuns  into  his  ship  instead  of  twice  as  many,  because  he 
judges  it  better  to  get  across  the  ocean  with  three  thousand  than  to 
sink  with  ten.  But,  strange  to  say  at  first,  the  two  or  three  items 
of  prayer  to  which  I  confined  myself,  under  my  handling,  expanded 
to  ten  thousand  tuns  ; — the  secret  of  that  being  (I  suppose)  that  in 
my  sense  of  having  shortened  down  my  circle  of  topics,  I  felt  it  safe 
to  amplify  each  one  a  little  more  and  in  the  bliss  of  that  amplifi- 
cation took  no  measure  of  time. 

I  must  not  be  too  long  in  giving  you  the  details  of  this  expe- 
rience, but  it  ended  in  my  getting  a  phonographic  reporter  to  plant 
himself  in  my  gallery,  and  take  down  my  prayerful  utterances  verba- 
tim, in  order  that  I  might  see  objectively  what  I  had  been  about  all 
those  fifteen  or  twenty  minutes.  For  on  running  them  over  in 
simple  recollection,  I  could  not  understand  by  what  meanderings 
or  other  leisurely  works  I  had  succeeded  in  being  gone  so  long. 
This  reporter  brought  me  to  my  senses.  There  was  the  whole  thing 
in  black  and  white,  and  I  recognized  the  prints  of  my  own  feet,  and 
the  earmarks  of  my  own  diction,  all  the  way.  I  was  a  convicted  sinner, 
and  I  started  out  in  a  still  more  energetic  repentance ;  and  I  want 
to  say  for  your  encouragement,  that  in  due  time  I  brought  myself 
within  what  I  conceive  to  be  proper  limits  in  this  very  important 
part  of  public  worship  ; — so  that,  three  or  four  years  ago,  when  a 
certain  gentleman,  in  my  congregation,  timed  me  on  Sunday  morn- 
ings for  three  months  or  more,  it  was  found  that  ten  minutes  was 
my  maximum  swing.  I  confess  though,  with  mortification,  that  I 
have  not  ability  enough  to  condense  into  ten  minutes,  or  less,  all 
the  particulars  of  a  truly  encyclopedic  prayer — that  is  all  that 
belongs    in   a    "common"    prayer  (as  our    Protestant    Episcopal 


YALE  LECTURES.  193 

friends  call  it.)  Neither  do  I  consent  to  be  confined  to  such  brevity 
on  all  occasions ;  but  I  make  that  general  aim ;  and  I  do  not  do  it 
in  mere  cowardice  before  an  impatient  and  unleisurely  generation, 
who  insist  that  everything  shall  be  short,  sharp  and  decisive,  (a  kind 
of  touch-and-go-movement  even  in  our  holiest  things,  the  newspaper 
article  being  the  divine  model  for  the  minister;)  but  I  am  con- 
strained to  strive  for  a  certain  brevity,  as  convinced  that  the 
nineteenth  century  sincerely  cannot  pray  more  than  ten  minutes  or 
so.  It  can  keep  its  head  down  and  be  respectful  twice  that  time  ; 
but  its  mental  exercise  for  the  last  half  of  the  same  it  were  unprofit- 
able to  explore. 

Now,  My  Brethren,  I  bear  down  on  this  thing,  and  give  you 
my  experience  and  beseech  you  to  be  brief,  because  you  are 
certainly  on  your  way  to  have  your  feelings  hurt  unless  you  take 
counsel,  and  begin  your  career  with  a  conscience  in  the  matter  of 
brevity.  It  seemed  a  sort  of  sacrilege  to  me  when  people  began  to 
animadvert  on  the  length  of  my  prayers  ;  but  they  kept  on  all  the 
same,  (never  harshly  though,  in  a  single  instance,)  and  by-and-by  I 
went  over  to  their  side,  and  have  had  a  comfortable  amount  of 
peace  ever  since. 

But  I  wish  you  to  understand,  I  do  not  deliver  this  exhortation 
in  behalf  of  brevity,  because  I  am  sympathetic  with  those  people 
who  would  squeeze  the  worship  of  the  church  to  death,  in  order 
that  the  sermon  may  have  room  to  magnify  itself  almost  without 
limit.  We,  on  the  one  hand,  and  our  liturgical  brethren  on  the 
other,  are  still  in  the  midst  of  the  old  debate,  which  shall  be  the  hub 
of  the  wheel ;  the  worship  or  the  sermon  ;  but  we  are  not  so  far  apart 
on  it  as  we  used  to  be ;  and  the  growing  opinion  among  us  now  is, 
that  while  the  sermon  is  not  to  be  belittled,  the  worship  is  to  be 
amply  provided  for,  more  amply  in  some  respects  than  in  the  old 
times.  And  following  in  the  line  of  this  opinion,  I  insist  that  the 
sermon  shall  take  heed  unto  itself,  and  call  a  halt  (on  all  ordinary 
occasions)  not  very  far  beyond  thirty  minutes.  Let  it  aim  at  thirty, 
and  if,  at  the  end,  it  finds  itself  in  a  genuine  gale,  a  true  wind  from 
Heaven,  and  cannot  stop,  why  nobody  will  want  it  to.  Let  it  sail 
on.  But  I  notice  that  these  heaven-born  winds  are  generally 
willing  to  be  reasonable  and  let  a  congregation  off  in  about  half 
an  hour. 

In  my  efforts  to  shorten  my  sermons  in  order  that  worship  may 
have  fair  scope,  I  have  found  it  very  serviceable  to  me,  to  keep 


104  YALE  LECTURES. 

before  my  mind  numbers  of  considerations  like  the  following. 
First,  that  in  the  course  of  my  ministrations  year  after  year,  it 
is  not  necessary  that  I  should  exhaust  the  subject  I  happen  to  be 
handling  at  any  one  time.  If  I  have  thoroughly  studied  it,  I  have 
discovered  a  good  many  important  points  in  it ;  and  partly  because 
they  are  important  and  partly  because  I  myself  have  discovered 
them  and  do  therefore  have  the  feelings  of  a  mother  towards 
them,  it  is  a  bitterness  to  me  not  to  bring  them  all  into  my 
discourse.  Moreover,  it  is  an  affliction  to  my  taste,  as  an 
intellectual  man,  to  make  only  half  a  statement  of  a  subject ; 
like  a  snatch  of  music  from  a  grand  oratorio.  But  I  remember  that 
I  am  a  settled  pastor,  and  (God  willing)  am  to  have  other  chances 
at  that  same  subject,  so  that  in  the  course  of  time  I  can  get  my 
whole  oratorio  moving,  and  give  my  congregation  the  advantage  of 
it ; — a  mutilated  advantage  you  may  be  inclined  to  say,  because  they 
have  not  taken  it  in  all  at  once  ;  and  yet  not  very  mutilated  I  fancy. 
For  not  half  of  them  are  disciplined  sufficiently  to  take  anything  in 
its  entirety  at  one  effort.  And  in  the  next  place,  while  I  may  be 
painfully  conscious  of  omissions  in  my  treatment  of  my  subject 
because  I  have  carefully  looked  it  all  through,  they  (as  not  having 
done  that)  do  not  feel  any  omissions.  It  sounds  to  them  like 
the  whole  oratorio.  In  the  Easter  Service  in  my  church  last  Sunday 
morning,  my  sermon  had  five  heads ;  but  the  choir  and  I  had  done 
so  many  things,  and  had  been  so  long  about  it,  that  I  was  compelled 
to  omit  the  first  four.  Nevertheless  that  fifth  head  I  found  had 
marched  out  into  the  air  as  though  all  the  preceeding  four  were 
sounding  therein.  Nobody  seemed  able  to  imagine  that  anything 
had  been  left  out.  I  presume  there  were  reverberations  of  those 
departed  and  invisible  four  heads  running  through  that  fifth  one, 
because  I  wrote  the  fifth  as  energized  and  fructified  by  my  pre- 
ceding converse  with  the  four ; — and  that  is  true  of  all  our  sermon- 
izings.  We  make  a  full  study  of  a  theme,  and  then  deliver  only  half 
our  thoughts  on  it,  or  less;  but  in  that  half,  our  entire  prepara- 
tion resounds.  Three  years  ago,  at  the  installation  of  a  pastor,  I 
heard  one  of  my  brethren  deliver  an  extended  charge  to  the  people, 
and  the  other  evening,  at  another  installation,  I  heard  him  deliver 
it  again.  But  as  he  was  crowded  into  a  late  hour  by  me  and  others 
who  had  preceded  him,  he  was  compelled  to  abbreviate  his  deliver- 
ance ;  badly,  he  thought ;  and  he  told  me  beforehand  that  he  felt 
unhappy.     He  shortened  it  fully  one  half  I  should  say.     But  I  did 


YALE  LECTURES.  195 

not  miss  anything.  And  I  venture  to  say,  nobody  in  that  house 
missed  anything — excepting  always  himself.  He  did  not  give  us 
the  whole  loaf;  only  a  slice  ;  and  of  course,  such  a  proceeding  as 
that  is  grievous  to  the  feelings  of  a  generous  man.  He  felt  mean, 
but  the  fact  was,  the  whole  taste  of  his  loaf  was  in  that  slice. 
His  entire  mind  was  in  it,  his  spirit,  his  magnetism,  his  love  of  God 
and  man,  his  whole  feeling  about  the  relations  of  a  people  to  their 
pastor.  So,  friends  and  fellow-brethren,  whenever  I  feel  that  I  have 
done  injustice  to  a  subject  and  perhaps  bereaved  my  people,  by  a 
partial  presentation  of  it,  I  recover  myself  by  reflecting  that  I  am  to 
have  other  opportunities  to  preach  on  it,  most  likely  ;  and  that 
meanwhile  in  what  limited  bread  I  have  distributed,  there  is  the 
identical  smack  of  the  loaf. 

And  that  reminds  me  to  say,  that  it  greatly  assists  us  to  brevity 
in  sermonizing,  to  omit  all  those  preliminary  skirmishings  about  our 
subject,  (like  General  McClellan's  famous  earth-works  creeping 
slowly  up  the  Yorktown  peninsula  towards  Richmond,  in  the  days 
of  our  war;)  to  omit  all  these  skirmishings,  I  say,  which  have  not 
in  them  the  real  heart-beat  and  quintessence  of  the  subject,  and  are 
only  like  the  dry  burr  on  a  nut ;  to  omit  them,  and  make  a  straight 
march  for  the  center,  and  give  the  people  the  very  relish  of  the 
thing  in  the  first  sentence  if  possible.  That  saves  a  great  deal  of 
time  and  does  no  damage  either. 

Another  thought  wherewith  I  have  comforted  myself  in  my 
efforts  to  be  brief  is,  that  my  people  neither  require  nor  need  that 
I  should  consume  much  time  in  giving  them  the  processes  of  my 
thought,  the  steps  by  which  I  arrive  at  results.  What  they  most 
need  are  results  ;  assertions  from  a  man  who  has  looked  the  case 
up  and  knows  what  he  is  saying.  I  am  making  haste  along  here, 
and  cannot  expound  this  idea  as  I  would  like,  and  put  in  suitable 
qualifications  ;  but  I  look  back  and  see  that  in  the  first  years  of  my 
sermonizing  (to  say  nothing  of  later  days,)  I  wasted  a  good  deal 
of  my  time  in  the  pulpit,  and  a  good  deal  of  the  time  of  the  people, 
in  mapping  before  them  minutely  the  path  of  my  own  mind  through 
the  subjects.  I  made  lengthy  arguments  in  support  sometimes 
of  axioms  and  sometimes  of  truths,  which,  although  not  axioms 
exactly,  yet,  for  all  purposes  practical  and  popular,  are  better  argued 
by  an  outright  statement  glowing  with  the  heat  of  personal  ex- 
perience. There  is  that  in  the  constitution  of  mankind  which 
responds  to  the  main  affirmatives  of  the  Christian  religion.      Say  Sin. 


196  YALE  LECTURES. 

and  every  human  soul  echoes  your  word.  Say  God,  say  Eternity, 
say  Sorrow,  say  Jesus,  and  put  it  home  with  the  weight  of  your  per- 
sonal knowledge,  and  how  can  wire-drawn  reasonings,  and  philoso- 
phizings  and  goings  to  Richmond  by  a  circuit  of  half  the  continent, 
add  anything  to  it.  So  much  on  keeping  the  sermon  within  proper 
dimensions  with  a  view  to  give  worship  a  large  place. 

My  second  remark  on  prayers  (whether  long  or  short)  is,  that 
in  them  we  should  conceive  God  very  distinctly,  and  make  our 
whole  movement  out  towards  Him.  I  sometimes  almost  think  it 
would  be  better  to  have  before  our  eyes  a  visible  representation  of 
God  in  such  form  as  reverent  art  has  been  able  to  devise ;  and  on 
that  form,  idealized  and  transfigured  perhaps,  by  our  holy  imagina- 
tion, fix  our  eyes  and  there  hold  while  we  pray ;  this,  rather  than 
to  be  conscious  chiefly  of  the  congregation,  and  have  half  our 
prayer  just  a  speech  to  them.  A  parishioner  of  mine  in  one  of  our 
conference  meetings,  went  into  such  a  deep  and  absorbed  movement 
of  prayer,  that  (for  quite  a  space)  he  entirely  forgot  the  rest  of  us 
all  about  him,  and  continually  used  language  that  implied  that  he 
was  alone,  as  in  the  privacy  of  his  room.  That  seems  hardly  the 
thing  to  do,  but  I  submit,  that  ignoring  the  congregation  in  prayer 
is  better  than  ignoring  God,  especially  as  prayer  is  ostensibly  an 
address  to  God,  and  not  an  address  to  man  at  all.  I  think  that 
God,  from  his  stand-point  in  the  Heavens,  is  more  pleased  with  a 
man-ward  lapse  of  memory  than  a  God-ward  ;  and  is  more  likely  to 
grant  a  request  that  goes  straight  to  its  mark  in  that  concentrated 
and  absorbed  way. 

The  advantages  of  a  clear  vision  of  God  in  prayer,  and  an 
absolutely  resolved  holding  of  the  mind  to  Him,  and  never  dropping 
to  the  assembly,  are  such  as  these.  It  lifts  you  above  all  human  fright 
— which  is  apt  to  be  rather  severe  sometimes  in  a  young  and  inex- 
perienced man,  especially  if  he  be  constitutionally  timid.  It  pro- 
duces in  you  just  that  self-abasement  which  is  not  only  suitable  in 
prayer,  but  necessary  if  it  is  to  be  true  prayer,  and  to  bear  in  upon 
God's  mind  effectually.  It  rules  down  your  diction  to  a  godly  sim- 
plicity, saving  you  from  oratory,  and  rhetorical  vaporing,  and  all  those 
posturings,  and  tones  and  tremendous  originalizations,  which  are  fitted 
to  catch  the  ear  of  men  but  are  most  unseemly  in  anything  that  pro- 
fesses to  be  prayer ;  and  which  in  addition  to  that,  render  it  impos- 
sible for  the  congregation  to  follow  you  in  any  other  way  than  they 
follow  an  oration.      They  may  be  greatly  entertained  and  greatly 


YALE  LECTURES.  197 

stimulated,  both  intellectually  and  religiously,  by  prayers  of  the  sort 
that  I  am  criticising ;  but  as  for  praying  under  such  a  lead,  they 
cannot.  Perhaps  numbers  of  them  will  think  they  do,  (not  having 
analyzed  the  matter,)  and  perhaps  whole  congregations,  under  the 
pernicious  education  of  a  favorite  minister,  may  come  to  feel  that 
prayer  is  hardly  worth  listening  to,  unless  it  puts  itself  forth  in  fresh 
and  ingenious  expressions,  in  touches  of  fancy,  in  exuberant  illustra- 
tions, and  in  re-statements  of  Christian  Doctrine  that  are  brand-new 
and  unprecedented  ;  but  their  view  is  sufficiently  shown  up  by  ask- 
ing the  one  question  :  Are  such  outpourings  fitting  if  conceived  as 
actually  addressed  to  God,  and  in  so  far  as  a  praying  man  senses 
God,  can  he — in  the  nature  of  things,  can  he — use  such  devices  of 
expression?  No,  he  cannot.  He  will  be  burdened  by  the  awful 
presence  wherein  he  stands,  and  the  solemn  personal  business  that 
sends  him  into  that  presence,  and  his  utterance  will  be  simple,  and 
lowly  and  not  too  profuse. 

I  wish  now  to  speak  of  a  few  things  that  tend  to  full,  various, 
rich,  easy,  and  right- flavored  prayer,  on  the  part  of  the  minister 
leading  his  congregation.  And  first,  I  should  advise  much  familiarity 
with  the  Catholic  Liturgies  ; — with  the  liturgies,  I  mean,  of  the  Church 
general.  I  think  it  is  a  wholesome  thing  to  read  them  and  study  them 
habitually,  especially  for  a  young  minister,  who,  as  being  young,  has 
not  yet  formed  his  habits.  He  need  not  go  under  any  bondage  to 
them.  He  need  not  publicly  use  them  in  form.  If,  at  any  point,  they 
savor  of  doctrinal  or  ecclesiastical  theories  which  he  ought  not  to 
accept,  very  well,  let  him  be  on  his  guard  against  them.  But  let 
him  read  them,  again  and  again ;  and  catch  their  devout  spirit  and 
suffuse  his  mind  with  their  seemly  phraseologies  ;  and  indoctrinate 
himself  in  the  broad  variety  of  their  worshipful  acts,  and  feed  his 
religious  imagination  on  their  old-time  precious  associations,  hearing 
in  them,  as  he  may,  the  voice  of  long-gone  generations,  the  innu- 
merable millions  of  God.  They  will  insensibly  chasten  his  taste, 
mold  his  style,  bring  his  extemporaneous  doings  into  orderliness, 
abate  his  eccentricities,  and  make  him  a  man  whom  it  will  be  a 
means  of  grace  to  be  led  by  in  public  worship.  That  will  be  their 
tendency  at  least,  if  they  are  used  judiciously  and  with  discrim- 
ination. 

Then  again,  I  think  that  a  minister  would  do  well  to  consider 
his  public  prayers  beforehand,  if  he  would  have  them  what  they 
should  be.     If  I  am  asked  :  should  he  write  them  ?     I  say  no  ; — 


198  YALE  LECTURES. 

much  less  memorize  them.  On  special  occasions  let  a  man  do 
what  seems  to  him  best,  and  let  the  rest  of  us  not  pick  at  him  much. 
But  as  a  general  rule,  it  seems  to  me  decidedly,  that  the  wisest 
way  for  us  unliturgical  ministers,  is  to  premeditate  our  prayers, 
and  prearrange  them  in  their  outlines  and  headlands  ;  and  leave 
all  the  rest  to  the  moment.  Prearrangement  secures  brevity. 
Prearrangement  and  premeditation  secure  thoughtfulness,  and  save 
us  from  the  waft  of  accidental  sidewinds  as  we  go  on  in  our  prayer, 
(like  unforeseen  and  unmanageable  spurts  of  emotion,  and  sudden 
ideas  which,  as  being  sudden,  fascinate  us,  and  swing  us  off  into 
digressions  of  whose  meanderings  and  outcome  nobody  can  be 
sure.;)  and  prearrangement  also  saves  us  from  omissions  that  ought 
not  to  be  made.  The  only  danger  in  premeditation,  that  occurs  to 
me  now  is,  that  it  may  destroy  our  spontaneity,  and  make  us  feel  as 
though  we  were  speaking  a  piece ;  or  searching  for  our  prayer  in  a 
corner  of  our  pocket.  Of  course  if  our  preparation  is  quite  elabo- 
rate and  formal,  it  tends  strongly  to  that  bondage  ;  a  bondage  which 
I  should  advise  you  never  to  submit  to.  Let  your  preparation  be 
less  formal.  Do  as  I  often  do  (if  you  cannot  do  any  better) 
namely,  digest  the  Scriptural  lesson  which  you  are  going  to  read, 
until  you  are  full  of  its  vitality ;  and  make  your  prayer  start  from 
that  lesson  and  there  have  its  roots.  Somehow,  I  find  there  is  a 
reality  in  that  kind  of  start ;  my  mind  comforts  itself  in  it,  and 
seems  to  have  a  real  business  on  hand  ;  and  although  it  might  seem 
that  your  prayer,  thus  born,  would  have  too  much  local  color  and 
not  reach  the  full  sweep  of  prayer ;  that  is,  not  get  in  all  its  ele- 
ments, and  all  the  proper  details — as  for  example,  if  you  root  in 
some  ringing  imprecatory  Psalm,  how  shall  your  prayer  get  over  into 
Christianity  and  there  expatiate  as  it  ought — nevertheless,  as  a 
matter  of  fact,  I  never  saw  a  Scripture  yet  that  was  not  a  good 
enough  starting-point.  The  old  Bible  is  full  of  one  blood.  Prick 
it  anywhere  and  you  have  struck  its  inmost  reservoirs  of  vitality. 
Or,  if  that  figure  be  not  quite  accurate,  then  let  me  say,  that  a 
truly  christianized  mind  turns  everything  that  it  touches  into  honey, 
and  especially  cannot  fail  while  ranging  the  manifold  clover-gardens 
of  Holy  Writ. 

Again,  much  private  prayer  makes  public  prayer  a  veritable 
divine  thing ;  and  a  right  thing  everyway.  I  affirm  unqualifiedly 
that  a  public  praying  that  does  not  rest  back  on  habitual  prayer,  is 
always  a  less  solid,  deep- moving,  fresh,  diversified,  effectual  and 


YALE  LECTURES.  199 

fructifying  thing,  than  it  ought  to  be.     O  !  how  important  this  is, 
and  how  I  ought  to  dwell  on  its  deep  import ! 

Still  again,  pastoral  visitation  makes  a  good  leader  of  worship. 
How  can  a  man  be  self-conscious  and  formal,  in  his  prayer,  and 
full  of  flighty  excursions  of  rhetoric,  and  an  ear-catching  minister 
everyway,  when  he  knows  by  having  been  into  the  houses  all  about, 
that  down  in  yonder  seat  before  him  is  a  mother  in  agony  over  her 
wayward  son ;  and  over  there  a  person  feeling  his  way  along 
anxiously  to  the  light;  and  yonder  a  family  heart-stricken  by 
bereavement ;  and  there  a  man  so  poor  that  he  cannot  sleep  nights  ; 
and  beyond,  another  so  spiritually  insensible  and  lost  that  you  do 
not  know  but  he  is  lost  forever ;  and  all  about  in  front  of  you,  men 
and  women  in  full  bloom  for  the  heavenly  life,  whose  faces  are  a 
benediction,  and  whose  thanksgivings  you  want  to  voice  in  your 
prayer.  The  innumerable  touch  of  human  hearts  makes  a  good 
prayer,  I  say. 

Once  more,  a  profoundly  Scripturalized  mind  makes  a  good 
prayer.  We  cannot  use  liturgies  much ;  therefore  let  us  use  the 
Bible ;  memorize  its  passages,  season  ourselves  with  its  doctrines, 
enrich  ourselves  with  its  imageries,  read  and  study  its  wonderful 
histories,  consort  with  its  illustrious  personages,  live  in  its  poetry, 
domesticate  ourselves  in  its  old  Ritual,  analyze  its  texts  and  single 
words,  and  find  how  vital  they  are  to  the  last  shred  and  atom,  and 
how  they  magnetize  and  empower  the  mind  ; — then  shall  our  wor- 
ship move  on,  as  in  the  most  robust  and  historic  of  liturgies ; — our 
thought  will  be  charged  with  the  authentic  flavors  of  God,  and  our 
language  seem  heaven-born  sometimes;  for  it  shall  go  to  the  heart 
as  being  redolent  of  the  one  and  only  universal  Book. 

Finally,  and  as  underlying  all  the  rest ;  all  prayer  has  the 
privilege  of  being  in  the  Holy  Ghost ;  and  is  prayer  in  proportion 
only  as  it  is  thus  originated  and  sustained.  Many  well-intentioned 
ministers  do  not  seem  to  fully  understand  this.  Theoretically  they 
admit  it,  but  in  their  practice  they  do  not  quite  launch  out  into  its 
mid-waters.  Possibly  rationalism  has  palsied  them  a  little,  (some 
of  them)  so  that  they  are  scarcely  more  than  speculative  super- 
naturalists.  Possibly  they  are  shy  of  letting  into  their  life  the  full 
doctrine  of  the  Holy  Ghost,  because  they  have  seen  instances  of 
wildfire.  Possibly,  in  some  Communions,  they  have  gone  over  to 
externalisms  too  much,  making  them  the  vehicles  of  God's  grace 
pre-eminently,  and  not  so  much  dwelling  on  his  direct  and  subjective 


200  YALE  LECTURES. 

approach  to  the  soul.  Of  course,  all  these  classes  of  men  have 
their  plausibilities  to  present,  and  some  truths  ;  and  I  should  like  to 
display  their  logic  for  them  here  to-day,  and  see  what  reply  I  could 
make.  But,  in  lieu  of  that,  I  lift  up  the  experience,  the  holy 
inspired  experience  of  innumerable  men,  who  have  preached,  and 
prayed,  and  led  their  assemblies  many  and  many  a  time,  and  thou- 
sands of  them  habitually,  in  a  fulness  of  the  spirit  of  God  which 
has  carried  them  above  the  fear  of  man,  as  the  stars  range  the  sky, 
and  has  let  them  into  great  sweeps  of  liberty,  and  great  visions  of 
truth,  and  great  confidences  of  faith,  and  great  victories  over  the 
minds  committed  to  their  care.  So  that  when  a  man  has  once  entered 
into  this  experience,  all  rationalistic  or  other  arguments  designed  to 
show  that  ministers  had  better  be  calm-minded,  and  careful,  and 
reliant  mainly  on  a  plodding  conscientious  use  of  their  own  faculties, 
and  their  much  learning,  and  their  oratory,  and  their  culture ;  all 
that  line  of  thought  and  talk,  I  say,  rolls  off  from  him  like  pebbles 
from  iron-clads.  While  a  committee  of  the  English  Parliament 
were  demonstrating  to  the  world  that  steam  roads  were  impossible, 
Stephenson  was  getting  one  ready,  and  running  it.  There  was  the 
argument  on  the  one  hand,  and  there  was  the  road  on  the  other. 
The  argument  was  first-class,  so  good  that  I  presume  some  of  the 
committee  stood  by  it  till  they  died  ;  but  the  people  who  consented 
to  try  the  road  never  cared  much  for  that  argument  afterward. 
Experience  is  better  than  all  the  Parliamentary  Committees  on 
earth. 

And,  My  Young  Brethren,  I  advise  you  to  seek  an  experience 
of  God's  supernatural  and  direct  empowerment  for  your  work,  the 
moment  you  begin  it ; — not  a  half-and-half  experience,  but  one 
that  shall  go  to  the  bottom  of  the  subject  and  settle  it  in  your  mind 
for  all  time,  and  forever. 

I  have  now  spoken  to  you  of  the  prayers  in  public  worship. 
The  minister's  management  of  the  other  parts,  as  hymns  and  music, 
and  choirs,  and  the  use  of  the  Scriptures,  is  a  subject  for  another 
address.  I  presume  you  would  all  be  glad  to  have  me  give  you  a 
recipe  for  managing  choirs.  And,  on  the  other  hand,  your  choirs 
would  like  to  get  from  me  a  recipe  for  managing  you.  I  do  not 
know  but  I  should  be  a  good  enough  man  for  advising  you,  because  in 
twenty-eight  years  of  service  I  have  never  had  a  single  quarrel  with 
a  choir.  I  do  not  think  a  minister  needs  to  be  a  technical  musi- 
cian in  order  to  stand  supreme  over  the  worship  of  song  in  his 


YALE  LECTURES.  201 

church.  If  he  is  thoroughly  grounded  in  the  eternal  principles  of 
worship  (as  very  man  may  be,  and  should  be) ,  and  continually  shows 
it  by  his  manner  of  conducting  the  worship,  on  occasions  both 
ordinary  and  special,  and  by  his  wise  discussions  of  the  subject 
from  time  to  time  ;  then  his  weight  with  his  people  will  be  such 
that  they  will  follow  him  and  not  the  choir,  in  any  question,  or  dif- 
ference, where  fundamental  principles  and  good  taste  are  involved. 
Of  course,  if  he  is  by  nature  an  intermeddler  and  a  picayune  Pope, 
with  no  tact  to  deal  with  men,  his  choir  will  be  likely  to  make  him 
unhappy  now  and  then  ;  as  will  also  his  whole  congregation  for  that 
matter.  And  probably  they  ought  to.  But  if  he  bears  rule  in 
God's  house  a  little  as  a  good  mother  does  in  her  realm,  that  is 
with  an  affectionate  firmness,  and  also  with  a  timely  blindness  to 
numerous  small  irregularities  which  are  only  skin-deep,  and  are  not 
worth  calling  a  court-martial  upon,  he  will  be  more  likely  to  move 
on,  and  hold  his  seat  in  the  saddle,  forever. 

But  I  had  better  pass  all  this,  and  conclude  with  some  running 
observations  on  the  state  of  things  liturgically  in  our  churches,  and 
the  possibilities  of  improvement.  Let  me  speak  particularly  of  the 
Congregationalists.  You  will  find,  when  you  get  among  them,  that 
they  are  resolutely  attached  to  the  old-fashioned  ways,  for  sub- 
stance ;  but  you  will  also  find,  I  am  sure,  that  they  are  more  and 
more  ready  to  receive  and  incorporate  into  their  worship,  this,  that, 
and  the  other  excellence  of  other  Communions.  They  do  not 
believe  in  a  priesthood,  they  are  not  very  energetic  sacramentarians, 
they  honestly  think  that  prayers  read  are  not  the  most  useful ;  they 
are  watchful  against  any  such  advance  of  rites  and  ceremonies  as 
will  make  formalists  of  them,  and  undermine  the  old  Protestant 
doctrine  of  Justification  by  faith ;  but  there  are  numerous  minor 
things  (new  things,  for  them)  towards  which  they  are  beginning 
to  be  hospitable.  The  Cross,  used  as  a  symbol,  does  not  much 
alarm  them.  They  are  importing  into  their  music  some  of  the 
old  standard  riches  and  practices  of  the  church  at  large.  They 
are  quite  widely  diversifying  the  ancient  order  of  their  service ; 
insomuch  that  now  when  I  exchange  pulpits  with  a  Congrega- 
tional minister  I  always  have  to  ask  him  what  his  particular 
practice  is.  Also,  if  a  minister  flushes  up  a  little  his  ritual  of 
the  Lord's  Supper,  with  a  view  to  have  the  externals  of  a  thing 
so  significant  and  so  precious  correspond  more  nearly  with  the 
thing  itself,  and  more  forcibly  address  the  feeling  of  the  congre- 
i4 


202  YALE  LECTURES. 

gation  ;  they  are  likely  to  put  up  with  it.  I  think  there  is  a  distinct 
advance  among  us  on  the  doctrine  of  a  real  presence  of  Christ  in 
the  Supper ;  and  that  on  that  account  it  is  feasible  to  introduce 
some  expansion  of  ritual  at  the  table,  and  some  new  emphasis. 
Whether  these  expansions  are  really  profitable,  I  do  not  now  dis- 
cuss. I  only  say  they  are  practicable  ;  as  has  been  already  proved 
in  numerous  cases.  Perhaps  my  own  church  is  an  extreme  illus- 
tration of  limberness  in  these  matters  (though  I  fancy  there  are 
many  a  good  deal  like  it  in  our  cities)  ; — but  in  that  church  there 
are  I  do  not  know  how  many  things  done  that  did  not  use  to  be, 
and  could  not  be.  Not  that  I  have  labored  with  them  very  much, 
though  I  touch  the  matter  now  and  then,  but  if  an  innovation 
seems  to  me  really  good,  and  not  inconsistent  with  any  essential 
feature  of  our  Congregational  system,  I  slip  it  in  sparingly,  on  my 
own  authority,  and  let  it  speak  for  itself.  I  am  pretty  careful  to  set 
on  foot  only  what  will  speak  for  itself,  in  actual  use.  If  you  call  a 
mass-meeting  of  your  church  to  discuss  whether  the  Apostles' 
Creed  shall  be  introduced  in  the  congregation  ever,  or  whether  a 
book  shall  ever  be  used  at  the  Communion  table,  or  whether  there 
shall  be  any  back  and  forth  of  responses  between  the  minister  and 
the  choir ;  in  every  case  some  man  will  be  found  to  object,  and  there 
you  are.  But  if  you  have  their  confidence  to  this  extent  that  they 
will  endure  the  first  sensation  of  a  new  thing,  put  in  on  your  own 
wisdom,  and  if  it  so  happens  that  you  have  the  wisdom  to  select 
the  best  things,  and  the  easiest,  and  the  most  beautiful,  and  those 
most  commended  by  long  use  in  other  branches  of  God's  church, 
and  if  you  have  the  patience  to  hold  back  numbers  of  things  that 
you  think  excellent,  and  not  swamp  the  people  by  your  inventions 
brought  in  flood-wise,  then  in  course  of  time  you  may  establish  in 
your  congregation  almost  anything  that  you  desire ; — that  is,  unless 
you  are  out-and-out  an  uncongregational  man — in  which  case  you 
ought  to  leave  the  denomination.  Some  of  you  here  present  will 
never  have  any  impulse  to  introduce  deviations  from  the  primitive 
way  of  our  churches,  but  others  of  you  will,  just  as  sure  as  you  live  ; 
and  our  Congregational  system  is  elastic  enough  to  accommodate 
you,  most  likely. 

As  an  illustration,  let  me  give  you  the  order  of  the  Easter  ser- 
vices at  my  church  last  Sunday  morning  : — I  do  not  consider  it  a 
triumph  of  holy  art  at  all,  for  it  is  visibly  unphilosophical  at  one  or 
two  points,  on  account  of  the  stress  of  certain  circumstances  that 


YALE  LECTURES.  203 

were  upon  me.  It  opened  with  introductory  services  by  the  minis- 
ter : — "  How  amiable  are  thy  tabernacles,"  and  the  like.  Then  fol- 
lowed the  invocation.  Then  the  Venite  : — "  O  come  let  us  sing 
unto  the  Lord,"  the  minister  reading  one  verse,  and  the  choir  chant- 
ing the  other.  Then  the  first  Scripture  lesson,  an  account  of  the 
Resurrection  of  Christ,  by  St.  John,  followed  by. a  corresponding 
anthem  of  the  Resurrection.  Then  the  second  lesson  (ist  Cor., 
xv),  followed  by  an  anthem  which  amplified  upon  the  theme  of  that 
incomparable  chapter.  Then  half  a  dozen  texts  were  read,  in  rela- 
tion to  Christian  faith,  and  confessing  that  faith,  whereupon  the 
choir  intoned  the  Apostles'  Creed.  Then  I  spent  a  few  moments  in 
what  to  me  was  a  most  sweet  and  holy  commemoration  of  those 
who  have  departed  in  the  faith  of  the  Resurrection.  I  took  the 
substance  of  it  from  the  liturgy  of  the  Catholic  Apostolic  Church 
years  ago,  adapting  it  to  our  needs.  I  have  no  time  to  repeat  it, 
but  it  went  on  in  this  way  : — 

First,  I  read  a  Scriptural  selection  which  began  : —  "  I  would 
not  have  you  to  be  ignorant,  brethren,  concerning  them  which  are 
asleep."  Next,  I  made  a  general  mention  of  the  saintly  dead,  to 
which  the  choir  responded  in  a  solemn  Amen. 

Next,  I  mentioned  them  in  several  classes,  with  a  like  choral 
response  to  each.  Those  classes  were  the  Old  Testament  saints, 
and  the  immediate  fore-runners  of  the  Lord ;  the  mother  of  the 
Lord,  the  Apostles,  the  Evangelists  and  Pastors,  the  martyrs  and 
confessors,  that  succeeded ; — and,  finally,  those  of  our  own  church 
who  had  left  us  during  the  year,  their  names  being  solemnly  re- 
peated, and  the  choir  following  with  these  words  : — "  May  they 
rest  in  thy  peace,  and  awake  to  a  joyful  resurrection."  Then  came 
a  congregational  hymn  : — "  Let  saints  below  in  concert  sing,  with 
those  to  glory  gone." 

After  that  the  service  swung  back  into  its  general  path  again 
and  there  were  prayer,  responsive  reading  of  the  Psalter  by  the 
minister  and  the  congregation,  a  Gloria  Patri ;  a  collection,  with 
offertory  sentences,  (which  sentences  are  sometimes  delivered  by 
the  minister  alone,  and  sometimes  by  the  minister  and  choir  in 
alternation),  a  hymn,  a  sermon  only  fifteen  minutes  long,  because 
what  went  before  had  been  uncommonly  protracted,  a  hymn  again, 
sung  by  the  congregation,  and  then  the  benediction. 

Now  every  year,  on  special  days,  like  Easter,  and  Christmas, 
and  Thanksgiving,  I  have  sent  to  me  from  Congregational  pastors, 


204  YALE  LECTURES. 

and  Presbyterians,  and  Baptists,  printed  special  programmes,  anala- 
gous  to  that  which  I  have  just  recited  in  your  hearing  ; — which  shows 
to  me  that  there  is  at  least  a  scattered  liturgical  movement  among 
us  (as  you  may  call  it) .  I  have  no  idea  that  we  are  on  the  way  to 
the  introduction  of  a  liturgy  proper ;  [there  are  profound  reasons  why 
that  will  never  come  to  pass  ;]  but  I  am  sure  that  within  certain  nor- 
mal limits  our  ancient  service  is  to  be  diversified  and  enriched,  the 
present  individual  instances  of  that  being  multiplied  far  and  wide. 
Years  and  years  ago  I  heard  a  Congregational  pastor  telling  of 
a  sermon  which  he  had  recently  heard  in  New  York,  from  a  well- 
know  Protestant  Episcopalian,  on  the  reasons  for  the  exact  order  of 
the  successive  acts  in  the  worship  of  that  church.  And  this  Congre- 
gationalist  remarked  with  much  contempt  on  the  insignificancy  of 
such  a  pulpit  theme  as  that.  He  ridiculed  such  topics  as  "  debilita- 
ting topics."  That  is  what  he  called  them.  And  I  recollect  that  I 
at  the  time  had  a  certain  amount  of  sympathy  with  him  in  his  view. 
By  which  circumstance  I  am  reminded  that  some  in  this 
assembly  may  think  that  the  present  lecturer  has  spent  a  good  deal 
of  time  to-day,  and  on  points,  some  of  which  at  least,  are  so  sub- 
ordinate and  minute,  as  to  be  open  to  that  ridicule  involved  in  that 
word,  debilitating.  Nevertheless,  I  stand  fast  in  my  conviction 
that  so  small  a  matter  as  the  law  of  before  and  after  in  the  ongo  of 
public  worship,  the  reason  that  one  act  comes  here,  another  there 
and  another  there  and  not  otherwise,  is  abundantly  worth  discours- 
ing upon,  even  as  God  discoursed  to  Moses  on  the  precise  details  of 
the  Jewish  tabernacle  and  its  worship  ;  and  that  our  congregations 
cannot  have  the  advantage  of  a  full- toned  cultus  if  the  study  of 
that  subject  is  belittled.  The  masses  of  the  people  cannot  be 
expected  to  be  students  of  the  subject.  They  sail  round  and 
round  in  the  routine  which  is  provided  for  them  ;  thanking  God 
and  making  no  complaint  so  long  as  their  prepossessions  are  not 
jostled,  [and  who  can  describe  the  endless  riches  of  holy  nurture 
which  they  receive]  but  we,  the  ministers,  ought  to  be  students  of 
the  subject,  in  order  that  our  churches  may  be  rationally  defended 
against  the  enormous  and  increasing  pressure  of  the  great  ritualis- 
tic bodies  of  Christendom  (their  doctrinal  pressure  and  their  liturgi- 
cal pressure) ,  and  at  the  same  time  may  have  the  intelligence  and 
the  catholicity  to  receive  from  those  bodies  whatever  contributions 
ot  thought  or  worship  may  profitably  be  incorporated  into  our 
system. 


LIBERTY  OF  THOUGHT  WITHIN 
CONGREGATIONALISM. 


When  I  stood  about  where  you  do,  my  Brethren,  I  had  an  anx- 
iety like  this  : 

I  began  to  study  theology  under  the  doctrinal  prepossessions 
of  my  religious  training,  as  we  all  do,  and  it  seemed  to  me  that 
candor  required  I  should  now  disengage  myself  from  those  prepos- 
sessions, and  address  myself  to  all  inquiries  in  that  beautiful  blank- 
ness  and  innocency  of  intellect  in  which  our  great  original  father, 
Adam,  was,  when  he  landed  in  this  strange  world.  I  had  hitherto 
believed  in  a  God,  and  did  yet,  but  a  knowing  class  of  men  had 
always  contended  that  there  is  no  such  Being,  so  I  must  wrench 
myself  if  possible  into  a  totally  judicial  position  and  throw  upon  my 
instructors  the  task  of  showing  me,  in  my  assumed  ignorance,  that 
there  is  a  God.  And  the  whole  system  of  Christian  truth  must 
similarly  validate  itself  before  my  unbiased  mind.  So,  I  came  to 
this  Seminary  rather  than  to  any  other,  in  part,  because  I  had  an 
idea  that  Dr.  Nathaniel  Taylor  here,  took  contracts  of  that  sort 
and  enjoyed  them. 

I  cannot  conscientiously  recommend  to  other  men  this  at- 
tempted philosophical  impartiality  of  mine.  It  had  its  uses,  but  it 
had  its  mischief.  We  have  no  right  to  disavow  our  pious  training 
and  our  personal  experience  of  God,  even  to  the  extent  of  tem- 
porary non-committalism  ;  neither  do  I  believe  it  can  be  defended 
on  philosophical  grounds. 

However,  I  was  in  constant  fear  that  I  should  somehow  lose 
this  philosophical  balance  of  mine.  Some  teacher  might  get  in  on 
me  with  his  seductions.     Or  some  tenderness  towards  my  father 


206  YALE  LECTURES. 

and  mother,  now  away  from  me,  might  undermine  my  thinking. 
Of  course,  as  I  went  on,  I  accepted  a  goodly  list  of  things  as  pro- 
ven ;  so  that  I  was  willing  to  undertake  a  Christian  pastorate,  and 
did ;  but  I  knew  several  things  even  then  whereon  I  doubted,  or  in 
which  I  did  not  believe  in  just  that  complete  and  enthusiastic  way 
that  I  desired.  So,  now,  my  fear  was  that  the  position  of  a  preacher 
and  pastor,  with  its  obligations  to  a  pretty  full  orthodoxy,  and  its 
fine  advantages  of  all  softs,  which  I  certainly  should  not  want  to 
forfeit  by  any  too  great  freedom  and  independence  of  inquiry,  would 
incessantly  and  insidiously  operate  on  me  as  a  bribe  to  conformity, 
and  make  me  non-judicial,  thus  vitiating  all  my  thinking  and  disin- 
tegrating the  foundations  of  my  manhood.  In  fact,  I  sincerely 
thought  myself  in  some  peril  at  that  point.  And  so  my  first  years 
of  service  were  years  of  self-watchfulness,  and  perhaps  of  inordi- 
nate self-assertion,  as  against  this  supposed  liability  to  encroachment. 

Now  I  am  going  to  speak  to-day  to  that  state  of  mind,  think- 
ing it  not  unlikely  to  be  here  before  me  full-blown  or  in  the  bud.  I 
shall  say  certain  things  which  it  would  have  done  me  good  to  hear 
in  that  early  time  from  a  man  who  had  been  in  the  world  and 
among  the  churches  long  enough  to  discover  how  matters  go  on 
out  there.  I  have  been  exposed  to  that  tremendous  danger  for  thirty 
years  and  I  still  live  and  I  have  never  felt  freer  in  my  life,  intellect- 
ually, than  I  do  now.  That  is  the  simple  truth,  my  young  friends  ; 
and  I  will  explain  it  to  you. 

First,  I  found  that  our  Congregational  churches  concede  to 
their  ministers — well,  sometimes  even  an  indefensible  amount  of 
liberty,  as  it  would  seem  to  me.  I  have  preached  everything  that 
I  wanted  to ;  everything  that  seemed  to  me  true  and  entitled  to  a 
place  in  the  pulpit.  No  committee  ever  visited  me  to  tame  me 
down  to  their  own  views  of  things  ;  or  beg  that  I  would  reef  in, 
in  my  speculations  on  the  wide  ocean  of  the  doubtful  or  the  un- 
knowable. I  sailed  to  all  points  of  the  compass,  and  landed  on  all 
distant  shores,  wherever  the  excursive  impulse  took  me  and  I  seri- 
ously thought  it  my  duty ;  only  one  man  ever  made  a  formal  call 
upon  me  in  the  interest  of  more  prudence.  He  was  a  good  man, 
and  particularly  ignorant,  and  naturally  circumscribed,  and  repre- 
senting nobody  on  earth  but  himself.  He  treated  me  well,  and  I 
treated  him  well  and  extracted  profit  from  his  talk  and  loved  him 
till  God  took  him. 

No  doubt  you  must   get  into  your  teaching  the  substance  01 


YALE  LECTURES.  207 

the  Christian  religion.  You  must  show  that  you  are  not  exploring 
to  the  ends  of  the  earth  under  a  sheer  vagabond  impulse,  but  in 
the  interest  of  truth.  You  must  concede  to  the  people  the  same 
liberty  that  they  concede  to  you,  and  not  conceive  of  your  pastor- 
ship as  a  lordship  and  practical  right  of  tyranny.  You  must  make 
it  plain  that  you  are  after  their  welfare,  whatever  you  say  or  do. 
Take  heed  unto  these  few,  obvious  things,  and  then  no  man  in  the 
world,  who  holds  himself  under  any  responsibility  at  all  to  other 
people,  is  freer  than  you  are  as  a  Congregational  minister.  That  is 
my  experience. 

Again,  I  have  attended  ecclesiastical  councils  these  many  years, 
as  faithfully  as  any  other  man,  and  of  the  scores,  young  and  old, 
whom  I  have  seen  appear  before  these  bodies  for  ordination  and 
for  installation,  I  never  knew  but  one  to  be  rejected,  and  he  lost  his 
case  because  he  had  not  character  enough  to  carry  him  through. 
As  a  theologian  he  was  a  fair  success  and  would  have  been  set  in 
office  by  a  unanimous  vote.  Occasionally  I  have  seen  individual 
votes  recorded  in  the  negative,  and  in  one  instance  the  majority  for 
the  candidate  was  but  one,  while  after  the  council  was  dissolved  a 
stricter  count  seemed  to  show  that  the  body  did  really  divide 
exactly  in  the  middle.  But  no  matter,  he  went  in.  Also  on  the 
far  horizon  I  have  heard  reverberations  of  negative  majorities,  as  in 
this  city  within  a  year ;  and  in  other  States  over  the  hills  and  far 
away,  but  near  enough  to  be  suggestive  ;  still  these  adverse  majori- 
ties are  as  exceptional  as  cyclones  and  earthquakes,  and,  unlike 
cyclones,  they  are  often  mitigated  by  facts  like  these  : — the  majority 
in  the  negative  is  small ; — or  it  is  numerical  and  not  moral ;  or  the 
majority  leaves  on  record  so  many  cordialities  towards  the  defeated 
man  that  he  is  almost  more  in  honor  than  he  would  have  been 
under  the  glorification  of  a  major  vote  ;  or  the  church  which  had 
sought  him  is  so  confident  of  its  own  right  judgment  on  his  merits, 
and  is  in  such  a  state  of  Christian  exasperation  withal,  that  it  pro- 
ceeds, right  or  wrong,  to  secure  his  services  as  though  nothing  had 
happened.  It  took  us  till  midnight  to  reject  that  one  minister 
whom  I  saw  rejected,  and  he  was  backed  by  such  a  high-wrought 
multitude  of  free-born  Congregationalists  that  all  of  us,  members 
of  the  council,  whose  home  was  in  other  cities,  took  the  earliest 
train  next  morning  out  of  those  parts — and  then  that  multitude  had 
an  installation  of  their  own ; — their  deacons  and  other  chief  men 
took  it  in  hand,  and  performed  the  necessary  offices  and  duties  at 


208  YALE  LECTURES. 

the  service ;  and  so  the  choice  of  that  people  was  triumphantly  ful- 
filled. And  a  thoroughly  foolish  piece  of  business  it  was,  as  they 
themselves  discovered  at  last.  Congregationalism  seems  to  have 
these  little  contrivances  in  the  interest  of  liberty,  or  is  made  to 
have.  In  one  case  within  my  knowledge,  a  council  pronounced 
against  the  installation  of  a  man,  on  the  ground  of  theological  con- 
fusedness,  and  did  it  by  a  strong  vote  ;  but  the  people  immediately 
called  another  council,  the  old  one  and  much  more,  and  by  that 
council  the  man  was  successfully  brought  to  the  haven  where  he 
would  be.  And  the  association  of  ministers  to  which  I  belong, 
licensed  a  young  man  (I  think,  unanimously)  who  had  just  been 
refused  by  another  association  for  theological  reasons.  A  discus- 
sion arose  outside,  on  the  comity  of  that  proceeding,  as  there  rea- 
sonably might,  even  as  that  second  council  which  over-rode  its  pre- 
decessor was  discussed,  as  it  also  reasonably  might  be,  but  no  one 
was  killed  in  either  case,  and  the  succeeding  ministry  of  both  of 
those  men  indicated  that  somehow,  and  sooner  or  later,  they  should 
have  been  put  into  service.  In  another  case  it  might  not  happen 
so,  but  in  this  case  it  did.  It  is  an  entertaining  sight,  sometimes, 
to  s|ee  the  way  men  among  us  get  their  liberty.  Congregationalism 
has  some  fine  old  expedients  for  heading  off  interlopers ;  but  it  is 
not  often  that  a  good  and  substantially  sound  man  of  our  order  is 
really  abused. 

If  he  is  young,  earnest,  and  interesting  at  all,  most  likely  some 
old  minister  of  renown  and  weight  will  have  his  bowels  of  compas- 
sion moved  in  his  behalf,  and  will  defend  him,  before  the  council 
and  before  the  public.  A  candidate  whom  I  wanted  to  vote  against, 
and  thought  I  might,  had  a  hearty  champion  in  Dr.  Joel  Hawes,  a 
man  of  divinity,  as  careful  and  sound  and  respected  as  you  could 
find.  On  another  occasion,  where  I  was  present,  an  equally  respec- 
table minister  burst  forth  in  indignation  at  what  he  considered  the 
pettifogging  and  hectoring  attempts  of  certain  councilmen  to  reduce 
a  young  candidate  to  his  ultimate  atoms,  and,  perhaps,  in  the  last 
analysis  show  him  to  be  unsound. 

Gentlemen  as  you  go  out  to  your  ministry  and  move  along 
the  years,  if  you  are  at  all  what  you  ought  to  be,  you  will  find  the 
country  full  of  these  natural  defenders  of  you  against  any  real 
wrong ; — sometimes  they  are  men  who  have  had  to  fight  a  fight 
themselves  ■  sometimes  men  who,  although  pretty  full  of  theology 
are  even  more  full  of  affection  :  sometimes  rational  liberalists,  and 


YALE  LECTURES.  209 

again  latitudinarians  ;  sometimes  lowly,  hard-working  pastors  whom 
the  practical  toils  of  life  have  taught  that  a  large  part  of  current 
theology  is  speculative,  and  not  binding ;  and  again  it  will  be  some 
scholar  who  has  not  spent  his  life  in  parish  service,  but  whose  stu- 
dious investigations  have  taught  him  the  same  thing ; — and  then, 
back  of  all  individual  defenders,  stand  ever  the  great  generous 
masses  of  the  Church,  with  their  rough  and  ready  judgments,  their 
quick  recognition  of  character,  and  stamina,  and  high  motives,  and 
their  fine  inflammability  on  occasion. 

I  have  no  disposition  to  disparage  the  Congregational  polity  as 
a  working  system,  but  it  has  several  excellent  escapes  for  men  who 
ought  to  escape.  Some  of  these  escapes  were  not  intentionally 
provided  by  the  generations  who  elaborated  the  system,  but  like 
seams  in  ships  they  open  of  themselves  when  the  system  falls  into 
a  rough  sea  of  circumstances ; — open  providentially,  as  some  would 
say.  Of  course,  reason  declares  that  a  ship  like  that  must  sink, 
but  it  is  one  of  the  features  of  this  craft  that  it  sails  on,  with  an 
occasional  open  seam  and  parting  of  its  timbers,  about  as  well  as 
any  other — in  practical  safety,  at  all  events.  When  a  sociologist 
notices  the  thousands  of  incoherent  and  hap-hazard  phenomena 
that  emerge  in  human  society,  he  might  say  that  such  a  chaos  and 
wide  welter  could  work  out  no  benefit  whatever  on  the  whole,  and 
had  better  not  be  started  at  all ; — as,  for  example,  how  can  there 
ever  be  any  equilibrium  of  the  sexes — numerical  equilibrium — when 
each  birth,  in  the  sex  of  it,  is  such  a  pure  fortuity ; — nevertheless, 
behold  !  somehow  this  'infinite  jumble  of  all  kinds  works  along  into 
eventualities  most  orderly  and  benignant — the  sexes  are  counted 
off  as  though  some  mathematician  had  that  interest  in  hand ;  and 
all  other  things  are  counted,  measured,  weighed,  assorted,  and 
manipulated  with  most  excellent  precision,  as  by  a  very  discreet  and 
million-handed  somebody,  ever  at  work  just  back  of  this  visible, 
vast  whirl,  criss-cross,  and  heigh-ho  of  luck  and  disorder.  Like- 
wise, Congregationalism  seems  to  some  critics  and  anxious  specta- 
tors, to  have  infirmities  enough  in  its  constitution  to  make  it  a  fail- 
ure the  moment  it  is  set  running ;  but  just  out  of  sight,  somewhere, 
is  a  something  or  other  that  saves  her.  And  I  should  like  to  give 
one  lecture  here  on  the  prudential  and  conservative  elements  in 
Congregationalism.  Again,  within  a  few  years  it  has  come  to  be  a 
fact  that  a  majority  of  all  our  churches  are  served  by  men  who 
were  never  put  in  their  places  by  a  council ; — another  convenient 


210  YALE  LECTURES. 

circumstance  for  those  jealous  for  their  own  liberty  of  thought. 
Those  of  us  who  have  been  accustomed  to  the  old  way  of  councils 
of  installation,  dislike  this  new  device,  and  think  we  can  show  why 
we  dislike  it ; — but  here  it  is,  beloved,  and  if  any  of  you  are  con- 
cerned lest  you  be  cramped  in  your  freedom  when  you  harness 
into  our  dear  old  system,  there  is  a  ray  of  light  for  you.  No,  you 
will  not  be  cramped,  any  more  than  is  good  for  you,  and  if  you  turn 
out  a  Methodist  minister,  you  will  not  be.  Please  tell  me  how  often 
there  comes  a  trial  for  ministerial  free-thinking  in  the  Methodist, 
or  the  Baptist,  or  the  Protestant  Episcopal  persuasions  ?  And  it  is 
not  because  those  bodies  are  getting  loose,  either,  but  rather  that 
their  ministers  are  practically  sound.  If  you  are  a  Presbyterian, 
the  grip  on  you  may  be  a  little  more  strangling  and  dangerous,  but 
if  you  find  yourself  coming  to  your  last  breath  in  that  body,  here 
outside  are  these  other  communions,  with  wide-open  breathing  for 
all  the  Presbyterians  on  earth,  if  only  they  will  appreciate  their 
opportunities  and  come  over. 

I  have  treated  this  subject  of  freedom  in  the  Congregational 
Communion  in  a  care-free  spirit  and  without  melancholy,  as  you 
have  noticed,  because  I  am  convinced  of  two  cheerful  things ;  first, 
that  the  schemes  of  prudence  and  reaction,  which  have  been  organ- 
ized of  late  against  whatever  excessive  freedom  there  may  be 
among  us,  will  not  be  permitted  to  endanger  our  liberties.  This 
reaction  may  go  to  excess,  it  may  billow  and  career,  and  toss  up  its 
foam  ;  it  may  raise  a  feeling  within  itself,  that  it  is  about  to  deluge 
the  planet ;  but  there  is  in  Congregationalism  a  rock-bound  coast  of 
Individualism,  and  local  Church-Independency,  on  which  these 
towering  reactions  are  sure  to  dash  and  shatter  when  they  get  far 
enough. 

Secondly,  I  am  convinced  that  this  shatter  of  the  various  con- 
trivances of  prudence  and  conservatism,  will  not  end  in  license 
under  the  name  of  liberty.  There  will  be  scattered  cases  of  top- 
heaviness,  and  vaporing  and  heresy,  among  our  ministers — and 
among  all  ministers ; — but  the  bulk  and  body  of  us  will  retain  our 
substantial  sanity  and  our  wholesome  effect  on  the  children  of 
men.  Taking  us  all  together,  we  are  a  hard  ship  to  wreck,  as  I  said 
before. 

So  much  have  I  put  forth  as  fitted  to  soothe  a  young  minister 
alarmed  as  to  his  liberty  and  as  to  the  possible  loss  of  his  judicial 
temper ; — as  I  used  to  be.     The  churches  will  not  oppress  him. 


YALE  LECTURES.  211 

Another  thing  I  discovered,  which  tended  to  bring  ease  to  my 
mind  in  regard  to  my  doubts  and  my  possible  inability  to  be  en- 
tirely conformed  to  what  might  be  required  of  me,  and  in  regard  to 
my  general  peace  in  life,  was  that  a  thoroughly  profound  and  satis- 
factory religious  experience  may  be  had  by  a  man  who  is  a  good 
deal  inexact  in  his  philosophical  religious  thinking.  For  instance, 
it  used  to  be  thought  that  the  sacrifice  of  Christ  was  a  ransom  paid 
to  the  Devil,  who  had  us  all.  That  was  doctrine  good  enough  in 
evangelical  circles  once,  and  the  piety  of  pious  men  nourished  itself 
on  that  view.  It  has  been  taught,  in  the  same  circles,  that  Christ 
in  His  passion  endured  exactly  what  we  sinners  would  have  been 
compelled  to  endure  had  He  not  interfered.  It  has  been  taught, 
too,  by  evangelical  teachers,  that  while  He  did  not  endure  the  same 
that  we  must  have  done,  He  did  endure  the  equivalent  thereof.  And 
so  on.  I  need  not  mention  all  the  fine  thinking  that  has  centered 
on  that  adorable  mystery,  the  mediation  of  the  Son  of  God.  But 
under  all  these  evangelical  theories,  human  souls  have  had  great 
gladness,  great  tenderness,  great  liberty  and  vigor  and  growth  in  all 
directions  ; — and  they  have  had  this  because  those  different  hypoth- 
eses have  all  abundantly  magnified  the  Redeemer  and  his  work ; 
and  in  magnifying  Him,  have  magnified  by  inevitable  implication 
all  the  essentials  of  the  Christian  theology.  As  respects  the  mere 
matter  of  gratitude  to  Jesus  Christ,  with  all  of  piety  and  salvation 
that  that  involves,  either  one  of  several  evangelical  modes  of  con- 
ceiving his  sacrifice  is  as  good  as  any  other  of  the  several.  So 
then,  we  have  great  freedom  in  our  philosophy  of  the  Atonement. 
We  are  not  compelled  to  settle  it.  We  would  like  it  settled,  but  we 
can  live,  and  live  to  all  eternity  blessed  for  evermore,  if  it  is  not 
settled. 

And  the  same  is  true  of  some  other  doctrines.  There  is  a 
great  struggle  to  get  an  infallible  Bible.  And  there  is  a  special 
anxiety  at  present  concerning  the  final  state  of  obstinate  sinners. 
If  it  is  not  one  thing  we  are  wrestling  on,  it  is  another,  and  this 
never-ceasing  human  endeavor  is  full  of  uses ;  but  the  substance  ot 
what  the  Infallibilist  is  after,  is  a  Book  that  gives  us — really  gives 
us — God's  way  of  salvation  for  men  ; — and  that  we  have,  whether 
Infallibilism  and  the  Infallibilists  are  true  or  not.  There  are  sev- 
eral views  of  that  Book  besides  his,  several  more  or  less  important 
variations  from  his  view,  that  are  conservative  of  all  necessary  doc- 
trine and  conservative  of  all  the  main  interests  of  the  Kingdom  of 


212  YALE  LECTURES. 

God.  And  as  regards  the  eternal  doom  of  sinners,  what  we  want 
is  a  view  that  does  not  diminish  penalty  beyond  its  maximum  im- 
pression on  men,  and  that  is  secured  alike  by  several  minor  varia- 
tions of  doctrine. 

I  have  struck  a  precarious  line  of  thought  here  and  ought  to 
pursue  it  something  farther,  if  I  am  to  do  it  justice  and  make  all 
snug  and  safe ; — but  it  must  answer  to  say,  as  I  have,  that  you  pro- 
vide for  your  release  from  a  great  deal  of  bondage  when  you  dis- 
cover the  distinction  between  the  substance  of  a  doctrine,  the  thing 
therein  that  makes  it  valuable,  and  the  philosophical  formulation  in 
which  it  happens  to  put  itself  forth  for  to-day.  In  the  proposition 
God  is  light,  it  so  happens  that  the  three  words  are  English.  They 
might  have  been  Spanish,  or  German,  or  Arabic,  and  they  were 
Greek ;  but  who  cares  for  the  particular  language  in  which  they 
stand,  if  only  in  every  language  we  get  the  fact  back  there  in  the 
nature  of  God,  that  He  is  Light,  and  in  him  is  no  darkness  at  all. 
So,  the  substance  of  the  Atonement  is  that  Jesus  Christ  somehow 
removed  all  difficulties  whatever  they  were,  on  all  sides,  to  our  eter- 
nal and  complete  salvation  ;  and  these  refinings  as  to  a  ransom  paid 
to  Satan  and  so  on,  are  but  the  man-made  Greek,  Spanish,  and 
English,  in  which  that  glorious  Fact,  or  Substance,  is  costumed. 
This  Substance  is  binding  on  us  and  to  fly  from  it  is  heresy  and 
spiritual  death,  very  likely ;  but  the  terminology  is  not  binding. 
Voice  the  Atonement,  O  man,  in  the  philosophical  tongue  that  suits 
you,  and  let  no  one  abridge  your  liberty  there. 

A  third  discovery.  I  found  that  whereinsoever  I  was  uncer- 
tain, doctrinally  uncertain  that  is,  as  to  the  philosophy  of  doc- 
trine, I  might  keep  still  about  it ;  still  before  my  people,  still  before 
my  brother  ministers,  except  here  and  there  a  chosen  soul,  still 
everywhere  and  all  the  time.  A  young  man  is  not  apt  to  know 
that  silence  is  very  often  his  privilege.  He  cannot  see  why  such  a 
proceeding  is  not  deception  and  duplicity.  He  wants  his  flag 
afloat  in  the  upper  air  and  not  hidden  in  the  darkness  of  his 
pocket.  But  may  not  men  and  ministers  have  some  privacies? 
This  spirit  of  outrightness  is  beautiful  and  let  us  keep  full  of  it  so 
long  as  we  live  ;  especially  let  preachers  be  brave  and  transparent, 
and  let  their  congregations  have  the  unconfusedness  and  comfort  of 
feeling  that  they  are  so ;  but  we  must  have  our  outrightness  confine 
itself  to  matters  on  which  we  have  something  to  affirm.  Now  if  a 
man  has  gone  so  far  as  to  educate  himself  in  theology,  and  put  him- 


YALE  LECTURES.  213 

self  in  some  pulpit  to  preach  ;  presumably  he  has  a  list  of  things 
whereon  he  has  got  his  foot  firm  down,  so  that  he  wants  to  preach 
them.  It  may  be  a  small  list,  but  it  is  sufficient  to  make  him  an 
affirmative  man,  and  sound  affirmative  when  he  speaks,  provided  he, 
in  his  preaching,  just  keep  within  that  list  of  beliefs.  I  agree  with 
the  frequent  remark,  that  a  preacher  must  not  be  a  negative,  nor 
even  an  agnostic  ; — his  general  tone  must  be  declarative  and  un- 
qualified, rather  than  hesitating,  or  even  deliberative ; — but  a  young 
man  has  not  ripened  to  unqualifiedness  on  all  points  that  ever  occu- 
pied the  human  mind.  He  has  not  had  time  to  think  himself  out 
into  the  largeness  of  the  universe ;  neither  has  he  yet  found  his  way 
into  all  godly  experiences.  Still,  it  is  time  for  him  to  begin  to 
preach.  He  cannot  wait  till  he  reaches  full  stature  and  is  sixty  or 
seventy  years  old.  Moreover,  the  churches  do  not  want  him  to  wait. 
They  like  him  while  yet  downy  and  callow  and  chirping. 

But  even  now  he  has  learned  a  few  things.  He  has  learned 
the  doctrine  of  depravity  and  the  helplessness  of  man  ;  his  own 
heart  has  taught  him  that.  And  he  has  learned  that  there  is  a 
Redeemer.  Out  of  his  studies  and  out  of  his  experience  he  has 
settled  that.  He  has  learned  that  there  is  a  Hell  and  a  Heaven  ; 
he  has  been  in  them  both.  He  has  no  doubt  that  God  is,  and 
holds  men  responsible.  He  believes  the  Bible  a  divine  Book.  He 
has  found  it  so.  He  has  looked  out  on  the  world  and  noticed  that 
the  Christian  religion  has  force  among  men.  He  sees  that  the  men 
of  God  must  be  organized  in  the  Holy  Ghost  for  God's  work.  He 
has  had  his  communions  with  God.  There  are  a  score  of  points 
on  which  he  is  solid,  and  in  some  of  them  he  is  enthusiastic.  Well, 
let  him  preach  them.  If  he  knew  ten  times  as  much  as  he  does 
and  had  ten  scores  of  points,  instead  of  one,  the  one  score  that  he 
now  has  would  be  the  ones  he  ought  to  preach  nearly  all  the  time. 
The  most  mature  affirmative  theologian  gets  his  affirmativeness  from 
these  very  truths  that  this  young  man  has  already  grasped  ; — be- 
cause they  are  the  chief  truths,  they  are  the  Christianity  of  Chris- 
tianity ;  they  are  the  working  forces  of  the  Gospel.  If  only  a  man 
is  full  of  the  idea  that  Christianity  is  a  supernatural  religion — that 
alone,  it  carries  enough  in  it  to  make  him  a  powerful  preacher ; — 
a  man  of  faiths,  and  not  an  Agnostic,  mooning  forever  in  the  vast- 
ness  of  his  own  dubiousness  ; — a  man  in  contact  with  whom  other 
men  are  stimulated  and  helped  in  all  the  confusion  and  weariness 
of  life,  yea,  helped  on  their  way  into  the  final  glory  of  God.     Why 


214  YALE  LECTURES. 

consume  Sunday  time  in  opening  your  unsettled  questions,  when 
you  have  pulpit  topics  already  more  than  you  can  ever  get  through  ; 
— and  those  the  essential  topics,  too  ?  Why  is  it  a  part  of  manli- 
ness to  proclaim  your  unconcluded  thinkings  on  matters  which  it 
would  not  be  supremely  important  to  proclaim  if  they  were  con- 
cluded ?  Keep  still,  I  say  again.  Have  sense.  An  English  gen- 
tleman traveling  in  this  country  for  the  first  time,  accompanying 
Dean  Stanley,  had  spent  his  first  Sunday  in  Boston,  and  had  lis- 
tened to  one  of  our  eminent  preachers  there,  a  man  of  several  very 
mentionable  gifts  ;  but  what  most  impressed  the  Englishman,  as  he 
said,  was  that  man's  good  sense.  "  After  all,"  said  he  to  me,  "  after 
all,  the  greatest  quality  in  a  minister  is  good  sense."  Possibly  that 
has  been  said  before  by  somebody,  somewhere  ;  it  rather  sounds  so, 
and  yet  it  seems  fresh,  somehow.  Have  sense.  I  wish  it  did  not 
take  half  a  lifetime  to  get  it. 

A  fourth  important  discovery  that  I  made,  and  made  a  matter 
of  ease  to  my  mind,  was  with  regard  to  creeds.  I  feared  I  might 
not  be  able  to  accept  them  sufficiently,  and  might  be  uncomforta- 
bly pressed  towards  acceptances  from  which  I  reluctated,  as  I  have 
already  said.  My  church  might  press  me.  My  denomination 
might  press  me.  The  importance  of  preserving  my  influence  for 
good  might  lead  me  to  Creed  subscriptions  that  I  was  not  up  to 
with  all  my  faculties.  But  when  I  came  to  see  what  sort  of  a  thing 
a  Creed  is,  in  some  respects,  then  I  could  sign  an  ample  variety  of 
them.  A  Creed  is  a  storm-born  child  generally,  and  there  are 
storm  marks  on  it.  If  it  had  been  born  in  pleasant  weather ; — in 
the  deliberativeness,  meditativeness,  and  tranquil  undebative  tem- 
per of  peaceful  sunshine,  it  would  have  been  a  spherical  affair ; 
whereas,  it  is  hemispherical,  one-sided,  a  partial  utterance.  When  a 
man  says  to  me,  good  morning,  and  I  reply,  good  morning,  sir,  that 
expression  of  mine  is  not  the  whole  of  truth,  by  any  means.  It 
was  a  reply,  and  was  narrowly  limited  by  that  fact.  So  a  Creed,  the 
Nicene  for  example,  a  most  noble  and  much-used  symbol ;  but 
mark  the  thunder-stroke  movement  of  its  Trinitarian  clauses  : — "  I 
believe  in  one  Lord  Jesus  Christ,  the  only  begotten  Son  of  God, 
begotten  of  his  Father  before  all  worlds,  God  of  God,  Light  of 
Light,  very  God  of  very  God,  Begotten  not  made,  Being  of  one 
substance  with  the  Father."  I  do  not  know  that  any  human  com- 
position does  me  more  good  to  articulate ;  but  no  breath  of  man 
ever  shaped  itself  into  just  such  a  shape  as  that,  except  as  divinely 


YALE  LECTURES.  215 

stirred  up  by  some  denial,  as  the  Nicene  fathers  in  fact  were. 
After  this  burst  of  polemical  energy,  the  Creed  swings  into  the 
broad  Catholic  movement  of  the  Apostles'  Creed,  in  the  main,  the 
only  Creed  I  recall  at  this  moment  which  does  not  lie  open  to  my 
remark  as  to  their  polemical  origin,  and  their  resultant  partialism. 
That  has  the  true  earmarks  of  Catholicity,  and  is  therefore  good  to 
use  under  all  circumstances  and  in  all  ages. 

I  have  lying  open  before  me,  as  I  write,  the  Creed  of  the  Theo- 
logical Institute  of  Connecticut ;  which  I  mention  with  entire 
respect  and  simply  for  illustration's  sake.  It  is  a  Creed  which  I 
could  myself  sign,  as  all  members  of  the  Connecticut  Pastoral 
Union  have,  though  I  never  did  sign  it.  But  if  I  did,  I  should  do 
it  in  distinct  remembrance  that  the  document  was  originally  a  pro- 
test against  certain  phases  of  doctrine  which  it  was  supposed  might 
get  headway  in  the  Congregational  body  in  this  State  ;  and  that, 
starting  in  such  a  motherhood,  it  must  be  a  decent  child  and  show 
its  mothering,  as  it  honestly  does  ;  so  that  it  has  nothing  near  the 
breadth  of  the  two  Creeds  to  which  I  have  already  referred.  Of 
course  every  subscriber  to  that  Creed,  when  he  gets  his  name  writ- 
ten, in  the  secret  places  of  his  own  mind  adds  numbers  of  things ; 
antithetic  truths,  qualifiers  and  wholesome  expositions  of  the  docu- 
ment, thus  making  another  Creed,  as  long  as  the  one  he  has  signed, 
until  he  gets  himself  into  the  wholeness  of  Christian  doctrine  after 
all,  into  the  sea,  instead  of  being  detained  in  a  puddle.  And  that 
is  my  point ;  that  Creeds  must  be  signed  in  that  way — not  with 
mental  reservations,  I  do  not  mean  that,  but  with  mental  additions, 
ordinarily,  that  all  Christian  people  could  assent  to.  I  will  illustrate. 
The  article  in  this  Creed,  that  describes  God's  election,  runs  on  in 
this  familiar  and  innocent  manner  : — "  God,  from  eternity,  elected 
some  of  our  fallen  race  to  everlasting  life,  through  sanctification  of 
the  Spirit,  and  belief  of  the  truth,  not  for  any  foreseen  faith  or  obe- 
dience in  the  subjects  of  election,  but  according  to  his  own  good 
pleasure."  According  to  his  own  good  pleasure  !  Now  when  I  say 
amen  to  that,  I  interpolate  a  cogitation  of  my  own,  to  the  effect  that 
God  is  a  supremely  good,  reasonable  Being,  full  of  love,  and  finds 
his  pleasure  in  going  by  the  constraint  of  sweet  and  loving  reasons 
always.  And  that  is  exactly  why  his  "  pleasure  "  in  election — as  the 
Creed  calls  it — is  a  good  pleasure.  Behold  !  what  a  flood  of  the 
milk  of  Heaven's  kindness  is  carried  into  the  interiors  and  very 
entrails  of  an  Article  on  Election,  by  a  little  legitimate  and  friendly 


216  YALE  LECTURES. 

amplification  of  the  saying,  "  His  pleasure."  The  object  of  the 
makers  of  the  Creed  was  to  get  men  suitably  humbled  under  the 
sovereignty  of  God  in  Election ;  but  I  have  made  an  exegesis  that 
also  melts  men  ;  for  a  "  pleasure  "  so  infinitely  "  good  "  is  enough 
to  melt  anything. 

Appending  to  the  Creed  a  little  meditation  of  my  sort,  a  medi- 
tation which  I  should  expect  the  authors  of  the  Creed  would  them- 
selves approve,  I  manage  to  globe  my  conception  of  God  in  salva- 
tion, and  save  the  formula  of  the  Pastoral  Union  from  doing  me  any 
hurt.  If  it  had  gone  on  and  declared  that  many  are  elected  to  be 
lost,  as  numerous  Creeds  have  declared,  I  should  be  willing  to  sign 
that,  because  it  is  so ; — in  an  awful  rational  sense,  it  is  so — but  I 
should  have  my  private  appendix  to  that ;  namely,  all  lost  men  elect 
themselves  to  be  lost.  One  is  as  true  as  the  other,  and  no  theodicy 
is  entire  without  both  ;  so  that  self-election  should  stand  in  the  fore- 
front of  every  Creed,  as  conspicuous,  as  loud-spoken,  and  fondly- 
spoken,  as  God's  election. 

You  see  my  thought  about  Creeds  now,  and  how  I  seem  to 
myself  to  have  a  good  deal  of  liberty  in  them — honorable  liberty,  I 
claim.  If  my  Church  has  one  that  she  would  like  subscribed  by 
me,  I  am  ready.  If  the  Congregational  National  Council  pleases 
to  promulge  some  restatement  of  doctrine,  by  and  by,  I  agree 
beforehand  to  give  my  name  to  it.  They  could  invent  something 
that  I  would  not  sign,  but  they  will  not.  No  Council,  Synod,  or 
General  Convention,  in  these  days,  that  is,  of  the  Evangelical  type, 
would  issue  a  Creed  which  a  man  might  not  sign,  in  the  main  at 
least ; — sign  and  accept  in  the  real  meaning  of  its  words  and  even 
in  the  intended  meaning  generally.  By  the  way,  what  is  the  differ- 
ence between  real  meaning  and  intended  meaning?  Is  there  any? 
If  you  subscribe  to  a  Form,  are  you  not  honestly  bound  to  sub- 
scribe according  to  the  intention  of  the  authors  of  it  ?  Is  not  that 
its  real  meaning?  I  volunteer  a  small  cogitation  on  that — since  it 
seems  to  lie  in  my  path  through  this  subject — thus  : — 

The  authors  of  a  doctrinal  statement  may  have  launched  out 
in  that  statement  into  something  considerably  bigger  and  grander 
than  they  meant,  or  supposed  at  the  time  they  had  got.  Blessed 
be  God,  men  are  liable  to  these  unconscious  expansions,  when  their 
souls  are  in  great  travail  with  a  Creed.  You  see  something  analogous 
to  that  in  the  experiences  of  the  Biblical  prophets  sometimes. 
They  forged  expressions  intentionally  local  and  narrow,  but  behold 


YALE  LECTURES.  217 

those  expressions  are  susceptible  of  universal  uses,  and  the  Spirit 
of  God  that  presided  over  those  prophesyings  designed  just  that 
largeness.  Or,  take  a  modern  illustration.  Some  strict,  and  pretty 
denominational  Calvinistic  theologian  goes  upon  his  knees  for 
prayer.  He  is  a  godly  man  and  God  moves  in  him  as  he  prays. 
Perish  the  thought  that  he  there,  face  to  face  with  God,  would  say 
one  word  adverse  to  his  own  theology  which  he  has  solemnly  elabo- 
rated and  spent  a  lifetime  on — but  he  almost  does.  Yes,  he  prays 
in  such  a  way  that  an  Arminian  could  join  him.  He  is  asking  God 
to  save  a  certain  man,  and  in  his  earnestness,  while  the  doctrine  of 
decrees  is  not  denied,  and  need  not  be,  it  is  retired  for  the  time 
being  and  other  doctrines,  just  as  true,  are  brought  to  the  front ; 
and  the  effect  is  as  though  his  theology  were  getting  modified, 
dropping  its  denominational  marks,  and  taking  on  Catholicity. 

Anybody  may  be  overtaken  by  these  enlargements.  Secular 
men  are.  They  coin  sentences  that  reverberate  forever.  They 
make  speeches  that  go  in  among  the  classics  of  the  race.  They 
intend  nothing.  They  had  not  a  thought  of  ambition.  They  had 
not  the  least  premeditation,  very  likely.  But  all  the  more  because 
thus  unconscious  and  void  of  purpose,  they  were  open  to  the  spirit 
of  the  age,  or  the  spirit  of  history,  or  the  spirit  of  a  great  national 
movement,  or  the  spirit  of  God — call  it  by  whatever  name  you 
please,  I  fancy  that  on  inspection  it  will  be  found  to  settle  down  to 
that  last,  the  spirit  of  God  in  a  man.  Witness  Lincoln's  speech  at 
Gettysburg.  Witness  many  a  hymn,  and  many  a  national  hymn. 
Witness  some  music,  in  which  the  soul  of  mankind  will  speak  itself 
forth  forever. 

Also  witness  some  Creeds,  I  say.  The  writers  intended  Fatal- 
ism of  the  most  insufferable  species,  let  us  suppose ;  but  they  shot 
clear  over  into  Christianity,  and  Christianity  ever  after  could  use 
their  Creed  as  a  vehicle  of  her  large  meanings.  After  they  had 
finished  their  production,  they  looked  it  over  and  pronounced  it 
good — there  was  their  Fatalism  all  out  in  elaborate  black  and  white, 
all  they  could  ask,  so  they  think,  but  are  deceived  generally.  In 
Creed-making,  when  the  authors  have  made  sure  of  the  specialty 
most  on  their  hearts,  they  start  out  into  a  pleasant  excursion  in 
some  other  parts  of  Christianity ;  paying  their  respects  to  this  and 
that  doctrine  not  necessary  to  be  very  powerfully  stated  just  then 
they  fancy — moving  therefore  unpolemically — and  it  is  in  those  ex- 
cursions, if  nowhere  else,  that  they  are  likely  to  trip  and  fall  out  of 
IS 


218  YALE  LECTURES. 

their  specialty  in  a  measure ;  and  all  succeeding  generations  have 
the  advantage  of  their  misfortune,  and  sign  their  Creeds.  The 
great  God  who  notes  the  sparrow's  fall  is  unlikely  to  take  no  inter- 
est in  a  body  of  men  in  travail  with  a  Christian  Creed  ;  and  while 
for  wise  purposes,  He  sometimes  stands  aloof  and  leaves  them  to 
bring  forth  a  phenomenally  mean  result,  at  other  times  He  passes 
into  their  spirits  by  His  Spirit,  and  gives  them  a  victory  they  never 
prayed  for  ;  a  Creed  for  the  ages,  a  Creed  to  be  chanted  through  all 
the  tribes  of  Israel ;  and  when  we  chant  it,  we  do  not  chant  their 
intentions  alone,  but  their  magnificent  inadvertency,  their  unknow- 
ing seership,  their  service  in  the  will  of  God  made  articulate  through 
them.  What  would  not  the  Fathers  say,  if  they  could  get  up  from 
their  graves  and  see  how  their  partial  works  have  swept  the  world 
sometimes,  the  local  and  denominational  widening  into  the  univer- 
sal, the  individual  made  great  and  representative  of  the  whole 
Church  on  Earth. 

I  think,  then,  that  Creeds  sometimes  have  a  double  sense ; 
man's  sense  (the  sense  of  their  author)  and  God's  sense ;  and  you 
may  sign  which  you  please.  If  an  ancient  symbol  proves  large 
enough  to  hold  all  discoveries  made  since  it  was  issued,  very  well, 
put  the  discoveries  in  mentally,  and  sign  the  whole  thing.  I  repeat, 
a  free  use  of  Creeds  is  one  of  the  ways  by  which  we  secure  our 
liberty  as  thinking  men. 

I  come  now  to  the  last  head  in  this  discourse,  and  inform  you 
that  any  anxious  doctrinal  questioning  you  may  now  have,  will  be 
likely  to  be  eased  by  the  simple  lapse  of  time,  provided  you  go 
forward  in  your  plain  duty,  preaching  what  you  know,  bringing  the 
Gospel  to  bear  on  men  as  well  as  you  can,  and  looking  constantly 
to  God. 

How  often  does  the  following  come  to  pass  in  the  interior  his- 
tory of  ministers?  During  their  years  in  the  school  of  theology, 
and  for  some  time  thereafter,  they  lay  themselves  out  full-strength  on 
certain  questions  that  seem  to  them  to  lie  at  the  very  threshold  of 
theology ;  requiring  therefore  to  be  settled  before  the  business  of 
preaching  can  be  taken  up  in  earnest.  I  hung  for  a  long  time  to 
the  inquiry  touching  the  existence  of  a  God,  such  as  I  had  tradi- 
tionally received.  I  proposed  to  have  that  problem  thought  out, 
before  I  took  one  step  in  active  life ;  and  then  I  proposed  to  make 
daylight  shine  through  the  incoming  of  moral  evil  into  the  universe 
of  God.      It  could  not  be  much  satisfaction  to  discover  a  God  to 


YALE  LECTURES.  219 

be  preached,  unless  I  could  discover  that  he  is  a  good  one,  and 
worthy  to  be  preached — and  looking  out  on  a  creation  in  such  ter- 
rible confusion,  and  distress  as  this  one  of  ours,  how  could  I  find 
my  way  to  the  solid  conviction,  God  is  infinitely  good  ?  And  so  on. 
Questions  and  questions — and  prime  questions  many  of  them,  to  a 
man  about  to  spend  his  life  in  telling  men  about  God  and  his  ways. 
But,  for  various  reasons,  a  man  may  find  (as  I  did)  that  some  of 
his  questions  cannot  be  solved  by  him  at  present ;  whereat  he  falls 
back  tired  out  and  lets  them  go.  He  has  done  his  best,  and  they 
must  go.  In  the  case  of  some  of  them  he  accepts  that  slender 
preponderance  of  probabilities  which  he  is  able  to  raise  in  regard 
to  them,  and  goes  on  with  his  work.  In  the  case  of  others,  he 
makes  a  complete  adjournment  to  some  far-away  and  more  lumin- 
ous future  ;  and  proceeds  to  preach  just  so  much  as  he  has  discov- 
ered. His  new  work,  with  its  splendid  motives,  and  its  successes 
very  likely,  wakes  enthusiasm  in  him,  and  his  old  energy  for  un- 
wieldy questions  therefore  slackens.  In  a  hand-to-hand  fight  with 
evil  he  forgets  to  discuss  how  evil  broke  in  on  us  originally.  In  his 
joyful  proclamation  of  the  Christian  salvation,  he  forgets  some  of 
the  intricate  questions  as  to  Biblical  inspiration.  There  in  the 
Book,  beyond  mistake,  is  the  salvation,  and  that  is  enough  to  fill  a 
man  and  keep  him  speaking  with  all  his  might.  But  by  and  by 
out  of  the  pigeon-holes  of  his  mind  tumble  by  accident  this  and 
that  old  question  of  his  ;  and  to  his  amazement,  when  he  tests  him- 
self on  them  he  finds  that  they  are  settled,  and  he  could  not  tor- 
ment himself  with  them  now  if  he  tried.  Some  of  them  are  set- 
tled as  being  solved.  When  his  present  mind  looks  them  in  the 
face,  they  seem  to  have  no  special  perplexity.  He  has  not  studied 
them  since  those  old  days  of  mental  tribulation ;  nevertheless  they 
are  clear — pretty  clear.  He  has  had  personal  experience  of  God, 
and  that  former  debate — is  there  a  personal  and  good  God — is  to 
him  as  though  a  man  should  fumble  an  axiom,  and  pretend  to  feel 
dreadfully  because  he  could  not  understand  it.  Experience  goes 
where  logic  cannot.  Perhaps  I  cannot  demonstrate  that  my  will  is 
free,  but  I  feel  it  free  in  me  ;  so  no  matter  about  your  demon- 
strations. And  particularly  in  the  things  of  religion,  demonstra- 
tions become  superfluous  as  experience  enlarges.  Experience 
makes  you  intuitive.  Experience  makes  you  a  large  and  know- 
ing theologian.  Experience  enables  you  to  sit  back,  high  and 
lifted  up  and  omniscient,  in  a  sort  of  Olympian  superiority,  and 


220  YALE  LECTURES. 

look  down  on  the  thinkers  in  the  plain  below,  who  in  much  dust 
and  confused  endeavor  are  wrestling  with  each  other  on  the 
problem  of  a  personal  Deity,  and  the  reality  of  an  external  world, 
and  the  facts  of  consciousness,  and  the  probability  of  any  kind  of 
life  beyond  these  present  horizons,  and  the  possibility  of  being 
saved  from  what  we  at  present  are,  by  the  power  of  Jesus  Christ. 
There  they  are,  and  up  there  he  is — raised  thereto  by  the  actual 
doings  of  God  in  his  soul. 

But  experience  does  not  solve  all  things,  and  so  our  minister 
finds  that  some  of  those  old  trying  subjects  of  his  are  settled,  not 
as  being  explained,  but  as  seeming  now  not  especially  necessary  of 
explanation.  If  I  have  no  interest  in  getting  a  thing  explained,  it 
is  as  if  explained,  for  all  practical  purposes.  These  indifferent  sub- 
jects I  dare  not  mention  in  full,  lest  I  appear  to  belittle  some  that 
others  think  of  solemn  consequence.  The  philosophy  of  the 
Atonement  is  an  interesting  matter,  but  one  can  live  and  save  his 
soul  if  he  postpone  it  to  some  convenient  eternity.  Large  areas  of 
philosophical  divinity  need  not  be  traveled  now,  and  need  not  be 
preached.  And  as  to  what  we  do  preach,  there  is  this  to  say,  that 
preaching  a  doctrine  with  a  view  to  save  souls  by  it,  and  not  with 
a  view  to  get  a  subject  systematically  unfolded,  is  just  the  Baconian 
way  of  discovering  exactly  what  that  doctrine  is  and  whether  it  is  a 
doctrine.  A  doctrine  that  cannot  be  used,  is  a  false  one.  A  true 
doctrine  which,  in  use,  seems  not  to  serve  God's  ends,  and  bless 
men,  is  misconceived  at  some  point  by  the  preacher.  If  all  minis- 
ters were  retired  scholars,  intent  on  theology  and  nothing  more,  I 
do  not  know  in  what  misconceptions  theology  would  not  at  last 
bring  up.  The  salvation  of  theology  is  trying  to  preach  it.  Will 
it  work?  Put  it  to  men.  Does  it  convince  them ?  Does  it  bring 
them  to  God  ?  When  I  read  some  of  the  essays  and  books  issued 
by  professors  of  theology,  I  say — blessed  be  studiousness  and  the 
cloister.  When  I  go  among  the  churches  and  see  the  preachers,  I 
say — blessed  be  service  in  the  field.  Well,  every  man  ought  to 
have  something  of  both.  Persons  made  as  I  was  could  never 
get  to  a  large  and  comfortable  settlement  in  the  truth,  I  fear,  by 
the  labors  of  seminary  life.  Inquiry  is  in  danger  of  being  fruitless, 
unless  brought  continually  to  the  test  of  life  and  manful  striving. 

Young  Gentlemen,  all  through  this  hour  I  have  carried  an 
implication  that  some  of  you  may  be  as  I  once  was,  and  I  have 
done  what  I  could  to  show  you  the  ways  of  liberty  out  in  the  world ; 


YALE  LECTURES.  221 

and  possibly  in  my  earnestness  for  so  long,  on  that  one  point,  I 
have  seemed  to  provide  more  liberty  than  any  one  needs,  or  should 
take.  I  have  no  idea  that  many  of  you  will  find  yourselves  pushing 
and  discomforted  to  get  your  liberty  when  you  fairly  come  to  the 
sacred  and  sweet  ministries  of  your  office.  You  will  have  passed 
through  your  curriculum,  and  in  it  will  have  become  affirmative, 
and  Creed-bound  to  a  certain  extent,  and  in  an  intelligent  and 
wholesome  way.  You  will  have  had  some  spiritual  experiences 
which  have  confirmed  your  faith  and  enlarged  your  religious  intelli- 
gence as  much  as  the  teaching  of  your  teachers.  And,  back  of  all, 
as  being  earlier  than  all,  stand  (I  hope)  the  faiths  of  your  child- 
hood, your  home  nurture,  the  old  nest-warmth,  the  magnetism  of 
your  mother,  to  mortgage  you  to  God  forever  and  make  all  serious 
Creed-wandering  impossible.  How  we  tug  on  those  first  moorings 
(the  home-moorings)  sometimes,  but  how  they  hold  ;  and  after  we 
have  sufficiently  roamed  the  realms  of  inquiry  and  had  our  strain 
and  peril  there,  how  peacefully  we  return  to  our  first  rest,  and  wor- 
ship the  God  of  our  fathers.  These  conservative  influences  will 
work  to  make  you  not  afraid  of  Creeds  ;  and  that,  joined  with  the 
fact  that  the  theory  of  Creed  subscription  in  these  days  is  quite 
elastic  in  almost  all  Christian  bodies,  will  give  you  a  good  sense  of 
freedom.  "  I  commend  you  to  God,  and  to  the  word  of  His  grace, 
which  is  able  to  build  you  up,  and  give  you  an  inheritance  among 
all  them  that  are  sanctified." 


THE  VAGUE  ELEMENTS  IN 
LANGUAGE. 


Gentlemen,  you  are  to  be  preachers  some  day  not  far  off. 
Some  of  you  have  begun  already  in  a  scattering  and  tentative  way, 
and  it  is  impossible  you  should  too  thoroughly  understand  the  instru- 
ment, Language,  whereby  you  are  to  get  your  impression  on  men. 
So  that  I  fancy  I  may  do  you  a  service  if,  to-day,  I  discourse  before 
you  on  the  Vague  Elements  in  Language,  and  the  value  thereof. 

I  suppose  you  are  already  advised  that  it  is  your  privilege  to 
be  clear,  and  convey  ideas,  definite  ideas,  when  you  speak,  but  I 
say  unto  you,  it  is  your  privilege  also  to  be  dim  and  misty,  and 
convey  no  sharp-cut  ideas  at  all,  but  only  impressions ;  which 
impressions  in  your  hearers  will  be  deep  or  not  just  according  as 
you  are  dim  and  not  clear ;  the  current  doctrine,  the  doctrine  I  mean 
of  the  average  man,  that  the  sole  function  of  language  is  to  carry 
ideas  into  people's  minds,  being  a  dreadful  untruth,  an  untruth 
which  has  miserably  circumscribed  many  a  preacher  and  many  a 
theologian,  and  has  caused  many  an  extremely  lucid  creed  to  be 
worshiped  three  times  more  than  it  deserved. 

I  have  nothing  to  say  against  clearness,  as  you  will  notice 
while  I  go  on.  Contrariwise,  I  should  have  been  willing  to  speak 
to  you  to-day  on  : — The  lucid  elements  in  language  and  the  value 
thereof; — as  willing  as  to  undertake  the  cause  of  mistiness,  were  it 
not  that  the  true,  great  function  of  Mist  is  not  appreciated  by  the 
most  and  does  not  get  its  real  place  in  courses  of  lectures  here 
and  elsewhere. 

This  is  a  great  and  special  era  for  insisting  on  perspicacity,  and 
the  disciples  and  enthusiasts  of  the  perspicacious,  in  the  scientific 
field,  many  of  them  at  least,  have  got  on  now  to  the  following  pitch 


YALE  LECTURES.  223 

of  impudence  ;  namely,  they  are  claiming  that  whatsoever  is  not 
absolutely  visible,  hearable,  touchable,  tastable,  smellable,  or  what 
is  the  same  thing,  material,  physical,  and  therefore  demonstrable, 
is,  on  that  account,  not  at  all  to  be  relied  upon ;  and  so  in  one 
grand  affirmation,  the  entire  kingdom  of  supersensible  entities, 
including  God  himself,  that  crown  and  sum-total  of  imperceptible 
realities,  is  obliterated  by  these  gentlemen.  Now  as  against  the 
modern  agnostic  position,  and  against  the  more  outright  doctrine  of 
absolute  denial,  I  on  this  occasion  lift  up  my  doctrine  of  Mist, 
the  legitimacy  of  vagueness,  the  sterling  use  of  vagueness,  the 
indispensability  of  vagueness  indeed,  in  order  to  the  highest  impres- 
sion on  the  human  mind.  It  is  nothing  against  a  thing  that  it  can- 
not be  explicitly  formulated.  It  may  be  as  real  a  reality  notwith- 
standing that.  And  that  it  resists  formulation  is,  as  likely  as  not, 
one  of  the  tokens  of  its  immensity. 

But  let  us  now  carefully  edge  along  into  our  subject  and  see 
what  we  find.  A  picture,  gentlemen,  is  a  statement,  in  a  termi- 
nology addressed  to  the  eye  and  not  to  the  ear.  And  whereinsoever 
it  has  force  and  arrests  the  beholder,  it  gets  its  hold  first  of  all,  of 
course,  by  its  distinctness.  That  stands  central.  A  painted  tree 
must  be  a  tree  to  the  eye,  beyond  a  peradventure  ;  a  man  a  man, 
a  leaf  a  leaf,  an  animal  an  animal,  and  nothing  else.  If  the  artist 
starts  to  say  tree,  and  leaves  you  debating  whether  it  be  not  a  human 
shadow  that  you  are  observing  on  the  canvas  there,  that  artist  there- 
by advertises  his  own  confusedness,  and  is  in  a  vagueness  that  no 
lecturer  can  defend.  For  I  should  have  said,  there  are  two  kinds  of 
mist ;  the  mist  of  a  weak  and  essentially  misty  mind  ;  and  the  mist 
of  minds  large,  rational,  lucid,  who  are  as  capable  of  clear  statement 
as  of  fogging,  and  who  never  let  in  a  shred  of  fog  save  as  attendant 
upon,  and  an  envelope  of,  a  sunlit  statement. 

So  then  the  picture  of  which  I  am  speaking  •  the  good  picture, 
the  powerful  picture,  has  something  to  say,  and  says  it  in  a  tone 
that  is  crystalline  and  ringing.  That  to  begin  with,  doubtless.  So 
much  as  that  I  concede  to  the  cause  of  perspicacity.  But  now 
behold  how  the  real  and  effective  artist  gets  himself  on  beyond  the 
finiteness  of  perspicacity,  into  the  larger  ranges  of  impression.  For 
there  is  no  use  in  talking  to  the  contrary,  whatever  can  be  stated  is 
too  small  to  carry  us  completely  away.  However  limited  we  may 
be  ourselves,  thank  God,  we  have  a  life-long,  constitutional  hunger 
for  the  unstatable.      Give  us  some  token  of  that,  O  artist.     Hang 


224  YALE  LECTURES. 

out  a  flag  over  where  the  unstatable  lies  hidden.  Draw  for  our  eye 
a  hand  that  points  out  into  the  vast  which  you  cannot  explore. 
Show  us  a  wind  blowing  that  way.  Anything,  anything,  to  tell  us 
that  beyond  all  that  can  possibly  be  formulated  in  the  terms  of  your 
Art,  there  sweeps  an  Unknown ;  and  that  you  are  not  yourself  in 
the  conceit  that  the  statable  is  anything  more  than  a  dot  to  the  out- 
spread unstatable.  Some  signal  to  notify  us  of  that  we  must  have, 
if  we  are  to  bow  ourselves  clear  to  the  ground  before  you. 

A  few  days  ago,  with  this  thought  foaming  in  my  mind,  I 
stepped  into  my  parlor  to  see  how  my  paintings  there  hung,  showed 
in  this  great  matter.  The  first  one  I  chanced  upon  was  a  copy  of 
Rosa  Bonheur's  "  Changing  Pastures  ;  " — a  work  full  of  space,  light, 
clearness,  and  beauty ; — no  metaphysical  theologian  ever  made  an 
argument  more  translucent  and  incontestable  than  that  woman's 
showing  of  her  wide  stretch  of  waters,  her  crowded  boat-load  of 
sheep  in  the  foreground,  her  sweep  of  mountains  in  the  distance, 
her  human  figures,  the  old  shepherd  and  his  oarsmen  in  the  boat, 
and  all  the  rest.  Her  realism  and  the  bare,  large  vigor  which  she 
manifests  in  that  out-standing  and  massive  reality,  are  most  admir- 
rable ; — and  manly.  I  mean  disrespect  to  nobody  when  I  call 
such  work  as  that  manly.  But  Rosa  Bonheur  does  not  stop  there. 
No.  Here  and  there  is  a  rent  in  her  realism,  through  which  we 
walk  out  of  the  real,  and  out  of  the  narrowness  of  visibility,  into 
the  ideal  with  its  immeasurable  scope,  its  absolute  openness  and 
feeling  of  openness  ; — the  region  wherein  the  soul  of  man  is  most 
at  home  and  most  elate,  always.  For  example  •  the  painter  might 
have  bounded  her  picture  by  a  wall  solid  and  high  as  heaven,  and 
she  might  have  arched  over  the  entire  scene  by  a  great  dome  of 
stone,  and  shut  us  down  under  that  to  contemplate  forever  her  well- 
painted,  literal  sheep — so  literal  that  you  can  hear  them  bleat  all 
packed  together  there ;  to  these  literalities  of  several  sorts,  I  say, 
she  might  have  confined  us,  with  not  a  ghost  of  an  outing  any- 
where ;  but — dear  Soul  !  she  wouldn't  do  it,  in  truth  she  could  not ; 
she  could  not  herself  endure  to  be  imprisoned  in  that  way.  So,  in 
place  of  a  dead  surface  of  wall,  or  any  hindering  thing,  she  set  a 
brave,  great  sky  ;  a  veritable  God's  sky  ;  not  a  leaden,  eye-confining 
thing,  almost  as  bad  as  a  wall,  but  a  sky  full  of  Beyonds  and  outly- 
ing infinitudes,  a  sky  that  beckons  the  impressible  beholder  into 
these  roomy  outings ;  so  that  while  her  picture  is  an  earth-scene 
and  tells  an  earthly  story,  and  not  the  highest  kind  of  one  either, 


YALE  LECTURES.  225 

but  a  lowly,  rather,  enlivened  and  glorified  by  no  definite  touch  of 
sentiment  or  pathos  ;  nevertheless  it  widens  away  into  the  heavenly 
spaces,  as  all  of  earth  ought  to. 

So  much  for  the  sky.  Then  under  the  sky  and  on  the  earth 
such  touches  as  these  occur — all  of  them  outings  for  the  contem- 
plative beholder,  you  notice.  Of  course,  if  the  beholder  wants  to 
stop  at  sheep,  and  in  sheep  have  his  whole  satisfaction,  I  do  not 
know  that  he  can  find  a  lot  more  to  his  mind  than  these  of  Rosa 
Bonheur's.  If  he  knows  a  sheep  when  he  sees  it,  and  if  sheep 
know  him  as  a  friend  of  sheep,  as  all  dogs  knew  John  Brown,  and 
all  breathing  creatures  loved  Donatello,  then  he  may  sit  down  in 
this  boat  on  the  waters,  this  sheep-boat,  and  stay  and  have  his  per- 
fect bliss.  He  will  escape  all  perils  of  the  imagination,  and  be  on 
first-rate  terms  with  those  scientists  who  cleave  unto  the  finite  and 
pooh-pooh  all  else. 

But  most  picture-  lovers  like  to  spread  a  little  and  wander,  and 
get  far-off,  and  be  let  forth  into  the  unhorizoned  ranges.  They 
fancy  that  life's  literalities  do  themselves  get  a  lift  somehow  and  a 
transfiguration,  if  only  in  looking  at  them  and  dealing  with  them 
we  have  in  us  at  least  an  obscure  sense  of  something  other  than 
they ;  other,  vaster,  and  more  dim.  Therefore  this  painter  of  ours 
comforts  us  by  opening  valleys  back  into  her  mountains  ;  great  val- 
leys ;  valleys  not  painted  but  suggested  by  the  top-lines  of  the 
mountains ;  and  as  they  are  only  suggested  and  not  closely  defined, 
you  are  at  liberty  and  are  invited  to  send  forth  your  musing  mind 
into  them  and  expatiate  to  your  heart's  content ;  a  performance 
this,  on  the  part  of  the  painter,  much  more  stimulating  and  satis- 
factory to  you  than  though  she  had  gone  up  the  valley  with  you  and 
told  you  all  and  everything,  as  she  did  in  the  case  of  her  sheep. 

Moreover,  by  way  of  otherwise  indicating  her  valleys,  and  not 
actually  plodding  along  up  them  and  showing  you  every  step  of  the 
road,  she  starts  her  waters  flowing  back,  and  up,  and  when  she 
gets  those  waters  well  started  she  stops  them,  but  she  stops 
them  in  such  a  way  that  when  you  notice  exactly  where  they  stop, 
it  is  plain  as  day  that  they  do  not  stop  there,  but  range  on,  you 
cannot  tell  how  far ;  just  as  a  winding  road  when  it  goes  out  of 
sight  gives  you  the  clearest  kind  of  a  notification  that  it  is  still 
moving  on.  Now  what  a  cunning  and  masterful  way  of  painting  a 
valley  it  is,  not  to  paint  it,  but  hint  it,  somehow.  How  much  more 
sizable  and  bewitching   is  a  hinted  valley  than   a   painted    one  ! 


226  YALE  LECTURES. 

It  is  like  a  veiled  lady ;  her  indistinct  face  gives  you  a  chance  to 
glorify  her;  but  if  she  lifts  her  veil,  the  facts  are  all  out.  The 
unveiled  facts  may  be  ravishing,  but  they  cannot  be  so  ravishing  as 
your  idealistic  creation  of  that  face  when  so  far  concealed  that 
there  is  a  chance  to  work  your  imagination  upon  it. 

But  pass  from  Rosa  Bonheur's  mountains  and  valleys  and  sug- 
gestive sky,  to  her  treatment  of  the  waters  over  which  she  floats  her 
sheep.  It  was  in  her  fond  heart  to  make  those  waters  lustrous 
under  the  slant  lights  of  her  sky ;  but  lustres  are  likely  to  detain 
the  eye  on  the  surface  and  hold  it  away  from  the  much  more  seri- 
ous and  impressive  thought  and  feeling  of  awful  depths  and  glooms 
underneath.  It  were  too  bad  to  give  us  a  stretch  of  sea  with  no 
fathomless  mystery  below,  merely  that  certain  soft  hues  might  waver 
before  us  and  shine  and  please.  Therefore  along  the  waves  now 
and  then  she  makes  a  submarine  hint,  and  in  the  far  foreground 
where  the  shadows  of  three  human  forms  are  cast  upon  the  water 
from  the  boat,  she,  the  painter,  instead  of  reflecting  them  to'  us 
from  the  surface  merely,  as  she  might  have  done,  carries  them  down 
and  down  ;  as  much  as  to  say  : — "  See  now,  this  water  is  no  shallow 
thing,  but  a  shadowy  abyss,  it  runs  down,  dimness  below  dimness,  it 
widens  away  in  tracts  and  tracts  of  gloom,  it  sequesters  hordes  of 
creatures,  it  treasures  old  wrecks,  and  the  dead  and  the  lost  things  of 
long  ago,  heaps  on  heaps  ;  " — "  yes,  it  is  a  sea,"  she  says  ;  "  I  can- 
not paint  it  for  you,  what  terms  are  large  enough  for  stating  such  a 
thing  as  that,  but  just  you  follow  those  three  shadows  into  the 
depths  and  see  what  sort  of  a  feeling  they  raise  in  you ; — it  is  not 
necessary  you  should  have  any  clear  ideas  as  you  follow  those 
shadows,  it  is  better  you  should  not ;  what  you  want  is  a  great 
impression  of  submarine  realities,  and  that  is  best  secured  by  escap- 
ing the  realism  of  detail  and  all  distinctness,  and  all  sense  of 
boundaries." 

I  have  spent  an  unconscionable  time  on  this  picture,  you  may 
think,  but  you  are  mistaken.  In  this  one  and  particular  study  thus 
long-protracted  I  am  getting  some  principles  established  which 
open  a  path  for  us  into  the  innermost  of  my  subject.  I  had 
thought  to  mention  the  vague  elements  in  other  pictures  on  my 
walls  ;  but  I  must  not  delay.  There  hangs  there  a  copy  of  Church's 
"  Sunrise  in  the  Tropics,"  which  begins  with  an  exhibition  of  tropi- 
cal foliage  as  veracious  and  full  of  fact  as  the  multiplication  table. 
But  then,  immediately  back  of  that  in  the  picture,  everything  goes 


YALE  LECTURES.  227 

into  haze,  a  lovely  illumined  haze,  deeper  and  deeper  as  you  follow- 
on  into  the  remote.  The  forms  of  things  struggle  through  it  with 
great  difficulty,  and  by  and  by  they  disappear  altogether  and  your 
eye  buries  itself  at  last  in  complete  confusion,  a  golden  confusion ; 
but  that  confusion  is  by  no  means  like  a  stone  wall  to  end  at.  You 
cannot  see  through,  I  grant  you,  any  more  than  you  could  through  a 
stone  wall — that  is  true — but  unlike  the  wall,  it  does  not  stay  your 
mind ;  nay,  it  projects  your  mind  into  regions  outlying,  and  you  feel 
very  much  as  though  you  were  actually  seeing  breadths,  and 
breadths  and  breadths  of  equatorial  luxuriance  and  splendor. 

These  illustrations  of  the  indeterminate,  and  the  function  of 
it,  taken  from  the  painter's  art,  are  fascinating  and  endless,  but  I 
want  to  take  you  now  over  into  the  field  of  music ;  peradventure, 
that  will  help  me  on  my  way  a  little  and  still  more  confirm  my  doc- 
trine of  the  vague. 

I  do  not  refer  now  to  music  wedded  to  words,  and  made  to 
carry  a  theme  contained  in  those  words.  I  am  playing  off  and 
away  from  words  and  language  as  yet,  with  a  view  to  come  down  on 
that  when  I  am  ready  for  it,  with  a  good  momentum  gathered  up  in 
these  perambulations  through  the  other  arts  or  modes  of  expres- 
sion, wherein  I  am  now  indulging.  For,  language,  painting,  music, 
sculpture,  architecture,  pantomime,  all  conceivable  instruments  of 
expression,  have  certain  common  features  and  in  so  far  as  they  have, 
a  study  of  one  is  a  virtual  study  of  the  others. 

The  majority  of  those  who  have  a  heart  for  music  and  receive 
imperative  and  dear  impressions  from  it,  are  not  themselves  musi- 
cians. They  understand  neither  the  terms  nor  the  grammar  of  the 
art.  The  whole  thing  is  a  foreign  language  to  them,  and  therefore 
they  cannot  speak  it ;  and  if  those  who  do  speak  it  have  any  dis- 
tinct ideas  whatever  in  that  speaking  of  theirs,  this  horde  of  igno- 
rant but  fond  listeners  know  not  what  those  ideas  are.  I  appeal  to 
the  experience  of  many  here  present,  if  that  is  not  so.  I  am  one 
of  the  ignoramuses  in  question.  And  yet,  there  is  no  sort  or  form 
of  utterance,  or  noise-making,  which  works  on  me  even  approxi- 
mately as  music  does.  I  listen  to  it  always  when  I  can.  I  follow 
it  about.  I  surrender  my  emotions  to  it.  I  was  never  yet  in  a 
state  of  rage  which  could  not  be  utterly  put  down  and  made 
ashamed  by  music  ;  never  in  a  grief  which  could  not  be  profoundly 
ameliorated,  for  the  moment  at  all  events ;  never  in  a  levity  that 
could  not  be  chastened,  nor  in  a  perplexity  or  general  state  of  dis- 


228  YALE  LECTURES. 

trust  that  could  not  be  led  on  and  out  into  serenity ;  and  never  yet 
was  I  in  any  seven-by-nine  confinement  in  the  finite,  and  there 
chafed,  but  music  could  infallibly  toll  me  off  towards  and  into  the 
amplitude  of  the  Infinite,  where  I  could  really  get  my  breath  and 
could  mysteriously  take  on  an  imputation  of  its  magnitude,  and 
have  some  sense  of  possessing  magnitude  myself.  But  not  one 
idea  gets  into  me  through  that  whole  performance.  Not  one.  If  I 
listen  to  a  preacher,  I  must  attend  to  his  meanings.  Meanings  are 
his  one  and  only  contrivance  for  getting  at  me  and  doing  anything 
with  me.  Up  there  in  a  great  sweat  he  stands  conveying  ideas,  and 
down  there  in  the  pew  I  sit  in  a  responsive  sweat,  trying  to  get 
ideas,  so  as  not  to  lose  the  whole  occasion.  A  twofold  wretched 
tug,  just  because  we  are  shut  up  to  having  ideas.  I  was  told  of  a 
boy  who,  after  a  great  deal  of  labor  to  make  a  composition,  began 
one  with  this  truly  affecting  remark  : — "  It  is  rather  difficult  and 
pretty  impossible,  to  convey  unto  others  those  ideas  of  which  you 
are  not  yourself  possessed  of."  Now  if  that  boy  had  been  a  musi- 
cian, there  would  not  have  been  a  bit  of  need  that  he  should  con- 
vey ideas  to  anybody.  His  composition  would  have  been  as  good 
without  them.  Whether  musicians  must  themselves  have  ideas 
when  they  speak  forth  in  that  almost  celestial  language  of  theirs,  is 
a  nicer  question.  Exactly  what  idea,  now,  lies  back  of  each  term 
of  that  cabalistic  eloquence,  do,  re,  mi,  fa,  sol,  la,  si,  do?  Please 
tell  me  that.  And  when  those  eight  emptinesses  get  themselves 
together  in  all  sorts  of  twist,  double-twist,  intertwist,  and  labyrin- 
thine elaboration,  and  thereby  make  people  cry,  and  sometimes' 
laugh,  and  sometimes  rend  heaven  with  their  indignation,  what  real 
thought  or  thing  is  there  to  which  that  miraculous  complexity  cor- 
responds. When  I  throw  out  among  you  a  sentence  of  this  lecture 
of  mine  I  am  able  to  point  you  to  some  concrete  thing  which  my 
words — most  of  them,  not  all — stand  for.  If  I  say,  "Gentlemen," 
you  know  what  that  means.  It  is  not  like  do  or  re  or  mi,  mere 
articulate  noise.  If  I  say,  "  Gentlemen,  you  know  nothing  about 
music,"  the  words  : — Gentlemen,  you,  know,  nothing,  and  music,  all 
instantly  suggest  some  reality  that  you  can  put  you  finger  on,  or 
your  thought  at  all  events.  The  term  nothing  in  that  sentence 
comes  nearest  to  a  failure  in  that  respect.  It  would  take  a  long 
hunt  to  find  the  tangible  counterpart  of  nothing,  I  fancy ;  and  I 
may  say,  as  I  pass,  that  that  is  one  of  the  numerous  words  at 
which  those  vaguenesses  get  in  wherewith,  I  contend,  language  is 


YALE  LECTURES.  229 

saturated.  But  I  am  speaking  of  music,  and  I  am  charging  vagueness 
on  it — for  is  not  a  language  vague  which  accomplishes  its  victories 
of  influence  without  carrying  ideas,  and  without  being  able  to  point 
to  any  perceivable  thing  in  heaven  or  earth,  that  its  do-re-mi's,  or  its 
overwhelming  combinations  of  do-re-mi's,  signify.  The  necessities 
of  my  subject  to-day  do  not  compel  me  to  prove  that  musicians 
when  they  compose  or  musically  perform,  whether  by  their  own 
tuneful  throats  or  by  instruments,  are  totally  empty  of  ideas.  All  I 
am  forced  to  say  is,  that  all  much-impressed  but  unmusical  listeners 
to  their  goings-on  are  not  so  impressed  by  ideas  conveyed.  As  a 
work  of  supererogation,  however,  I  do  hint,  that  musical  composers 
and  musical  performers  when  they  address  us,  are  not  in  just  that 
distinct  labor  to  embody  ideas,  ideas  clearly  formulated  in  their 
own  consciousness  and  anxious  to  be  delivered,  that  writers  and 
speakers  are  in  who  use  ordinary  language.  Of  course  I  do  not 
say  this  as  intending  to  disparage  music  in  comparison  with  the 
other  arts  of  expression.  On  the  contrary  I  put  it  foremost ; — 
beyond  Painting,  beyond  Literature,  beyond  Oratory,  beyond  every- 
thing.    I  like  what  Matthew  Arnold  says  in  one  of  his  poems  : — 

Miserere  Domine ! 

The  word's  are  uttered  and  they  flee. 

Deep  is  their  penitential  moan, 

Mighty  their  pathos,  but  'tis  gone. 

They  have  declared  the  spirit's  sore, 

Sore  load,  and  words  can  do  no  more. 

Beethoven  takes  them  then — those  two 

Poor,  bounded,  words;   and  makes  them  new; 

Infinite  makes  them,  makes  them  young, 

Transplants  them  to  another  tongue, 

Where  they  can  now,  without  constraint 

Pour  all  the  soul  of  their  complaint, 

And  roll  adown  a  channel  large 

The  wealth  divine  they  have  in  charge. 

Page  after  page  of  music  turn, 

And  still  they  live,  and  still  they  burn, 

Eternal,  passion-fraught,  and  free 

Miserere,  Domine ! 

Thus  much  in  glorification  of  music.  It  is  wonderful,  unique, 
Heaven's  solitary  child  and  darling.  But  in  the  midst  of  all  this 
that  I  say  about  it,  I  ask  you  not  to  forget  what  I  am  chiefly  after, 
namely,  this  ; — that  Music  holds  this  lovely  and  radiant  queenship  of 
hers,  by  reason  in  part  of  the  fact,  that  she  courageously  dispenses 


230  YALE  LECTURES. 

with  the  service  of  ideas  and  cleanly-minted  conceptions ;  as 
often  as  any  way  not  using  words  at  all,  as  in  instrumentation  for 
instance  ;  and  where  she  does  use  them,  as  in  her  do,  re,  mi,  taking 
care  to  select  arbitrary  and  utterly  meaningless  terms,  that  cannot 
be  tracked  back  to  any  physical  root  like  most  terms ;  terms  that 
cannot  be  traced  to  any  particular  association  that  explains  their  ori- 
gin, (as  where  a  certain  special  new  color  recently  came  to  be  called 
magenta,  because  a  certain  great  battle  had  just  happened  to  be 
fought  at  an  old-world  place  whose  name  was  Magenta)  :  selecting 
terms,  I  say,  that  owe  their  origin  to  the  stark,  inexplicable,  lawless 
volition  of  man,  terms  therefore  as  bare  of  associations  or  foregoing 
history,  as  a  new-born  babe  ; — that  is  the  vocabulary  of  Music,  in 
so  far  as  she  has  any.  Nevertheless,  let  me  say  it  once  more,  she, 
most  nearly  of  all  voices,  voices  the  infinite,  she  most  successfully 
raises  in  us  those  feelings  whose  chiefest  peculiarity  is  that  they  feel 
in  us  exactly  as  though  they  had  no  limits,  and  would  be  blas- 
phemed if  ever  limits  should  undertake  to  circumscribe  them.  I 
tell  you,  Men  and  Brethren,  we  are  all  pretty  small,  but  the  small- 
est of  us  every  now  and  then  has  emotions  which,  as  we  turn  and 
look  in  on  them,  seems  to  be  measureless — exactly  that ;  I  have  felt 
that  a  thousand  times — measureless — or  if  on  the  remote  outskirts 
of  these  emotions  in  us  we  observe  some  dim  similitude  of  metes 
and  bounds,  they  are  so  dim  that  they  do  not  distress  and  suffocate 
us ; — they  are  like  Rosa  Bonheur's  sky,  which  is  the  end  of  her 
picture  to  be  sure,  the  point  at  which  her  brush  stopped ;  but  the 
point  also  and  moreover  and  a  good  deal  moreover,  at  which  we 
are  passed  triumphantly  on  and  out  into  whatever  illimitable  voyag- 
ing we  have  the  sensibility  and  imagination  for. 

I  was  getting  off  the  substance  of  this  statement  not  long  ago, 
to  a  very  practical  and  concrete  woman,  a  woman  of  every-day, 
remorseless  sense  ;  and  she  told  me  she  wished  I  would  stop  talking 
in  that  way  to  her.  She  listened  attentively,  and  was  vexed,  because 
she  discovered  nothing  in  her  own  experience  that  corresponded  to 
those  big  moods  and  mental  states  that  I  pretended  to  be  describing. 
Gentlemen,  if  any  of  you  are  vexed,  I  cannot  help  it.  Perhaps 
some  day,  when  you  are  old  enough  and  impressible  enough  and 
reflective  enough  on  your  own  inward  state,  this  thing  will  begin  to 
glimmer  into  you.  Blessed  be  God  for  music,  or  for  whatever  thing 
has  the  knack  to  abolish  horizons  and  let  us  out  into  the  Infinite ; 
which,  after  all,  is  our  native  air. 


YALE  LECTURES.  231 

Speaking  of  sounds,  and  of  their  power  according  as  they  are 
indefinite,  consider  a  great,  booming  bell-stroke,  or  the  go-off  of  a 
great  cannon.  When  they  first  hit  the  ear,  those  sounds,  they  are 
even  painfully  definite  and  mind-piercing ;  as  excruciating  as  a 
creed  that  assumes  to  get  God  defined  completely  and  made  porta- 
ble in  the  finite ;  but  after  a  little  that  clear  first  crash  has  the 
decency  to  fine  away  and  fine  away  and  widen  off  into  space,  and 
grow  vast,  and  by  and  by  misty  and  wavering,  till  at  last  it  hovers 
and  pulses  on  the  very  verge  of  silence  ;  there  it  stands  trembling 
as  though  loath  to  jump  off  and  be  eternally  still ; — finally  it  jumps 
and  is  gone  forever,  and  then  it  comes  back  and  is  not  gone — then 
it  dies  again — then  returns  a  very  tenuous  and  phantasmal  ghost  of 
a  sound.     It  reminds  one  of  Tom  Hood's  lines  : — 

We  watched  her  breathing  thro'  the  night, 

Her  breathing  soft  and  low, 
As  in  her  breast  the  wave  of  life 

Kept  heaving  to  and  fro. 

Our  very  hopes  belied  our  fears, 

Our  fears  our  hopes  belied — 
We  thought  her  dying  when  she  slept, 

And  sleeping  when  she  died. 

So  that  vanishing  sound  thinned  out  through  the  whole 
immeasurable  air,  and  when  it  expired  no  mortal  could  tell ; — but 
I  ask  you ;  when  is  that  bell-stroke,  or  that  explosive  cannon,  most 
powerful ;  when  in  the  first  crash  it  is  separated  from  the  encom- 
passing silence  of  the  creation  by  a  line  of  distinction  like  an  abyss, 
or  when  its  confines  have  come  to  be  dubious,  when  it  has  reached 
the  border-lands  of  Silence  and  is  melting  into  silence,  like  snow 
into  the  river  ?  Its  vagueness  is  its  glory.  Its  vagueness  makes  it 
seem  large.  Its  vagueness  holds  us  in  a  hush  of  emotion.  Its 
vagueness  energizes  upon  us  and  in  us  and  produces  emotions  that 
are  the  duplicate  of  its  own  dreamy  magnitude.  And  it  is  just  so 
with  many  other  inarticulate  sounds. 

But  let  me  now  carry  my  doctrine  of  the  vague  over  into  Lit- 
erature, and  observe  how  the  case  stands  there.  Take  that  poem 
of  two  verses,  written  by  Alfred  Tennyson,  and  called  by  him, 
"The  Poet's  Song."  I  think  you  will  say,  Gentlemen,  that  it 
requires  good  courage  in  me  and  all  sorts  of  faith  in  my  dearly- 
beloved  vagueness,  to  go  to  that  man  for  specimens  of  it.     For  who 


232  YALE  LECTURES. 

that  ever  wrote  is  more  crystalline  than  he,  who  more  nearly  ap- 
proaches the  beautiful  finiteness  of  Greek  sculpture,  who  has  cut 
more  cameos,  and  who  more  delights  in  cameos,  with  their  explicit 
particularity  and  their  ever-legible  lines  of  limitation  ?  Yes,  that  is 
so  ;  but  Tennyson  is  a  great  man  ; — he  is  no  cameo  himself  and  he 
cannot  confine  himself  to  cameo  work.  As  a  matter  of  pastime  he 
may  toss  off  a  jewel  like  that,  and  there  stop ;  but  when  he  brings 
all  his  powers  into  the  field  ;  after  he  has  done  his  fine  cutting  and 
given  you  a  scene,  a  thing,  a  man,  a  thought,  so  that  it  stands  out 
like  a  dog's  head  on  a  door-knocker  for  distinctness  ;  he  proceeds 
to  call  you  off  into  regions  circumjacent  and  large  and  misty,  as 
likely  as  not,  like  the  sea-begirt  and  fog-bestrown  island  on  which 
he  lives  ; — tones  far-away  you  will  hear — tones  indeterminate — bells 
that  are  of  earth  perhaps  and  perhaps  of  heaven,  wind-sounds  "  from 
unsunned  spaces  blown,"  yes,  revelries  of  the  imagination,  ordered 
and  melodious  revelries,  he  will  give  you,  and  in  your  joy  you  will 
forget  cameos  and  crystals  and  all  clear-cut  forms  whatsoever. 

I  do  not  think  that  the  poem — "  The  Poet's  Song  " — is  so  good 
an  illustration  of  all  this  as  I  might  find,  but  it  does  furnish  a  good 
etching,  an  absolute  picture  ;  and  at  the  same  time  there  is  a  noble 
off-look  or  two  in  it,  which  gives  a  sense  of  room  and  range ; — 
exactly  as  Rosa  Bonheur,-  after  she  had  painted  her  sheep  with  Ten- 
nysonian  fidelity — there  they  are,  sheep  all  over,  precisely  as  God 
made  them — indulges  us  in  brave  sky-lines  and  great  suggestive 
chasms  and  valleys  in  her  mountains,  and  great  watery  depths,  and 
so  on ; — so  that  we  are  in  the  expansibility  of  the  Creation  a  little, 
and  not  in  the  belittlement  of  a  cameo. 

Tennyson  undertakes  to  tell  us  in  the  two  verses  mentioned, 
that  a  poet  went  forth  from  the  city  into  the  country,  seated  him- 
self, and  poured  forth  a  poetic  melody.  And  the  melody  was  so 
fascinating  and  amazing,  that  a  wild  swan,  a  lark,  a  swallow,  a  snake, 
a  hawk  and  a  nightingale,  all  paused  and  listened,  and  declared 
they  never  conceived  the  like.  As  I  read  now,  just  watch  these 
creatures.  You  can  see  them  as  visibly  as  though  I  had  them  here 
with  me  to  pantomime  the  thing  over  again  for  your  edification. 

The  rain  had  fallen,  the  Poet  arose, 
He  passed  by  the  town  and  out  of  the  street, 
A  light  wind  blew  from  the  gates  of  the  sun, 
And  waves  of  shadow  went  over  the  wheat, 
And  he  sat  him  down  in  a  lonely  place, 


YALE  LECTURES.  233 

And  chanted  a  melody  loud  and  sweet, 
That  made  the  wild-swan  pause  in  her  cloud, 
And  the  lark  drop  down  at  his  feet. 

The  swallow  stopt  as  he  hunted  the  bee, 
The  snake  slipt  under  a  spray, 
The  wild  hawk  stood  with  the  down  on  his  beak 
And  stared,  with  his  foot  on  the  prey, 

(It  must  have  been  marvelous  singing  that  arrested  him  in  his 
greediness  there.) 

And  the  nightingale  thought,  "  I  have  sung  many  songs, 

But  never  a  one  so  gay, 

For  he  sings  of  what  the  world  will  be 

When  the  years  have  died  away." 

Now  I  do  not  know  but  that  utterance  is  perfect,  artistically 
and  everywise.  But  that  in  it  which  engages  my  attention  at  the 
present,  is  first  the  author's  absolute  conception  of  his  scene ;  no 
cameo  I  say  was  ever  better  cut ;  there  is  a  statement  for  you  as 
firm-lined  and  obvious  as  though  made  under  oath,  by  the  most 
incorrigible  of  realists  ; — all  the  rights  of  perspicuity  are  religiously 
secured, — no  holy  creed  were  ever  better  in  that  regard ;  but  see 
now  secondly,  how  Tennyson  slips  in  a  magnitude  or  two,  and  gives 
us  an  offing  here  and  there,  an  outrun  into  the  majesty  of  the  dim, 
a  touch  of  atmosphere  which  like  all  atmospheres  ever  seen  of  man, 
comes  just  short  of  complete  translucency ;  and  we  all  know  that 
the  one  feature  by  which  atmospheres  get  those  lovely  shows  and 
carnivals  of  color  wherewith  they  so  intoxicate  us,  is  this  short- 
coming of  theirs  in  the  matter  of  clearness. 

When  our  poet  has  taken  us  into  the  country  and  spoken  of 
the  wind  blowing  from  the  gates  of  the  sun,  and  of  the  cloud- 
shadows  traveling  across  the  wheat,  he  has  therein  and  thereby 
given  us  a  feeling  of  height  and  space  out  there.  We  are  not 
invited  to  any  small  scene,  like  an  etching  hung  in  a  gallery,  but  the 
whole  creation  is  called  in  to  make  an  occasion  worth  while.  And 
that  is  a  good  start.  Plainly  it  is  no  mere  cameoist  that  has  us  in 
charge.  Next  he  proceeds  to  inform  us  that  this  same  whole  crea- 
tion is  made  to  be  attent  and  is,  in  fact,  just  ravished  by  that  out- 
poured melody  from  that  man  there  seated.  The  prose  way  of 
stating  that,  would  have  been  to  state  it  straightforwardly,  just  as  I 
now  have.  But  to  hint  it,  by  picturing  three  or  four  animal  crea- 
tures as  arrested  and  attent,  is  three  times  as  effective  as  any 
16 


234  YALE  LECTURES. 

statement.  To  our  quick  feeling,  those  intensely  concrete  and  lively 
specimens  of  the  creation  are  more  than  the  creation,  on  the  prin- 
ciple sometimes  mentioned,  a  part  is  more  than  the  whole  ;  as  that 
veiled  lady,  you  remember,  was  more  revealed  when  partly  veiled 
than  when  her  entire  unobscured  face  rose  on  us. 

By  that  cunning  device,  then,  of  the  selected  animals,  Tenny- 
son takes  us  on  an  unexpected  walk  through  the  creation,  a  walk 
not  precisely  marked  out  either,  but  vague,  vast  and  alluring.  I  do 
not  say  that  we  are  wide-awake  to  all  this,  and  consciously  say  to 
ourselves  : — It  is  through  the  creation  we  are  now  going ; — no,  the 
author  does  not  wish  us  to  be  in  such  a  state  of  clear  intelligence 
as  that.  All  he  wants  is  to  start  a  creation-feeling  in  us,  while  we 
concentrate  on  his  four,  interesting  live  creatures. 

Two  releases,  then,  we  have  had  already  from  the  finite  and 
narrow ; — both  times  into  the  outlying  creation.  But  now  comes  a 
third  release,  not  exactly  into  the  creation  this  time,  but  into  the 
future ;  and  not  into  any  finite  and  comprehensible  future,  the 
future,  that  is,  of  dates  and  days  and  periods,  and  generations,  and 
slow  great  cycles  ;  the  future  that  can  be  held  in  clear  idea — no, 
not  into  any  such  terminable  and  little  thing  does  he  project  us, 
but  hear  him  : — 

The  nightingale  thought,  I  have  sung  many  songs, 

But  never  a  one  so  gay, 
For  he  sings  of  what  the  world  will  be 

When  the  years  have  died  away. 

When  the  years  have  died  away  !  Are  we  detained  on  larks, 
hawks,  swans,  snakes,  and  nightingales  now  ?  We  started  with  them  ; 
for  we  must  start  on  some  solid  and  real  thing  always ;  and  men  of 
mind  always  give  us  some  clear  thing  like  that  to  begin  with  ; — or 
as  I  said  before,  in  every  picture  there  needs  to  be,  for  a  central 
fact  to  tie  up  to,  a  statement,  a  cubical  nugget  of  reality ; — but  this 
nugget  having  been  secured  in  this  poem  and  we  having  gone  all 
abroad  from  that,  in  a  flourish  or  two,  as  I  have  explained ;  we  are 
caught  up  at  last  and  shot  forth  and  forward,  farther  than  cannon- 
balls  ever  went,  farther  than  space  ever  stretched,  beyond  the  roll  of 
time,  into  a  nebulous  Somewhere,  so  nebulous  as  to  be  next  thing  to 
Nowhere,  and  in  that  half — somewhere  half — nowhere,  our  minds  roll 
about  in  just  that  big  confusedness  which  the  poet  wants  us  to  be 
in.     He  might  have  said  or  had  his  nightingale  say  : — ten  thousand 


YALE  LECTURES.  235 

years  away,  or  a  hundred  thousand,  or  a  million.  Perhaps  Jonathan 
Edwards,  in  his  more  acute  and  analytical  moments,  would  have 
liked  that  better.  There  is  a  relishable,  factual  quality  in  that,  that 
I  can  see  myself.  But  I  do  not  want  to  look  at  it  long.  I  would 
rather  be  ballooned  in  the  Infinite,  to  the  sound  of:  — 

When  the  years  have  died  away  ! 

There  is  also  a  touch  of  the  supernatural  in  this  poem,  which  I 
have  not  mentioned.  How  easy  it  is  to  construct  a  first-rate  argu- 
ment wherein  it  shall  be  proved  that  the  supernatural  and  the  infi- 
nite cannot  be  set  forth  in  natural  and  finite  terms  at  all.  Natural 
terms  !  Physical  terms  !  Limited  terms  !  They  embody  the 
unlimited  !  Why  is  not  that  a  contradiction  in  so  many  words  ? 
By  whatever  laborious  devices  you  carry  this  earth-bound,  small  ter- 
minology of  yours  over  towards  the  supra-mundane  and  its  immen- 
sities, and  howevermuch  you  sublimate  these  terms  of  yours,  as  is 
often  done  in  poetry,  will  they  not  distinctly  savor  all  the  same  of 
their  earth-born  pedigree  ?  Can  they  go  beyond  themselves  ?  Must 
not  all  sky-piercing  human  structures  stand  on  the  earth  and  there 
keep  standing  however  high  they  go,  and  rock  when  the  earth 
rocks?  What  are  God,  angels,  heaven,  hell,  and  all  the  rest  over 
yonder,  as  we  conceive  and  describe  them ;  and  what  can  they  be, 
but  materialistic  and  anthropomorphic  projections,  long-stretching 
shadows  of  things  here,  that  we  have  come  to  know  about  ?  An 
angel,  conceived  by  a  man,  is  a  magnified  man.  And  even  God, 
in  all  our  descriptions  of  him,  is  simply  or  mostly  a  powerfully 
idealized  man,  we  might  say.  We  call  him  a  person  and  thus  make 
him  head  up  in  a  bounded  consciousness,  like  us ; — an  awful  and 
large  consciousness,  to  be  sure,  but  the  moment  he  is  alleged  to 
have  consciousness  at  all,  he  is  represented  as  fenced  in  from  the 
great  All  of  being,  a  section  of  the  All,  nucleated  and  organized  ; — 
in  fact,  made  little  in  order  that  he  may  be  made  conceivable  to 
little  folks  like  us.  A  friend  of  mine  asked  Matthew  Arnold  when 
he  was  among  us  recently,  how  he  came  to  invent  that  much-bela- 
bored definition  of  God,  which  he  has  put  into  his  books.  He 
calls  him  you  recollect,  "  that  power  other  than  ourselves  that  makes 
for  righteousness."  And  he  replied  "that  he  did  not  invent  it  in 
the  interest  of  agnosticism  or  unfaith,  but  in  the  interest  of  a  larger 
faith."  He  had  grown  sick  of  the  current  belittlement  of  the 
Almighty  in  the  customary  religious  talk  about  him  as  a  person,  and 


236  YALE  LECTURES. 

so  on.  He  thought  that  the  pious  masses  are  under  the  delusion 
that  when  they  have  said  person,  and  a  number  of  other  strictly 
human  and  cameo  words,  they  have  actually  got  God.  Therefore 
he  proposed  to  throw  them  out  to  sea  and  get  some  size  into 
them,  bereaving  them  utterly  of  their  old,  circumscribed  lingo,  and 
calling  them  to  take  note  of,  and  be  awestruck  under,  this  rather 
finely  conceived  and  first-rate  vagueness  ;  "  That  power  other  than 
ourselves  that  makes  for  righteousness."  What  a  sudden  lift  out  of 
the  smallness  of  personalism,  that  expression  the  not-ourselves  is  ! 
Whether  it  is  in  every  respect  a  safe  and  wholesome  thing  to  be 
lifted  into  the  eminently  thin  ether  of  Mr.  Arnold's  definition,  I 
will  not  now  say ;  but  as  to  the  whole  notion  that  supersensible 
things  and  persons  cannot  be  set  forth  to  any  good  purpose  by  a 
naturalistic  and  human  language  ;  I  say  they  can.  What  terms, 
pray,  dues  Mr.  Arnold  himself  employ  when  he  sets  out  to  take 
away  the  people's  God,  and  give  them  another  and  larger  one? 
Was  the  sentence  "  The  power  not  ourselves,"  made  out  in  this 
unknown  that  we  all  want  to  get  into  and  talk  about?  I  venture 
to  guess  that  it  was  devised  in  the  library  of  Matthew  Arnold, 
and  that  every  word  of  it  is  nothing  but  English — not  divine,  not 
even  angelic,  but  earthly  to  the  last  degree.  I  presume  you  could 
trace  those  words  into  the  earthly  past  a  thousand  years,  and  very 
likely  find  where  they  first  came  up  out  of  the  soil  of  earth  and 
time. 

But  I  was  remarking  on  Mr.  Tennyson's  poem,  "  The  Poet's 
Song  " — and  saying  there  is  an  element  of  the  supernatural  in  it ; 
and  in  it  you  will  see  one  of  the  ways  by  which  the  supernatural 
may  be  and  often  is  set  forth  in  the  machinery  of  the  natural. 
Those  birds,  snakes,  and  what-not,  that  were  so  captivated  by  that 
chanted  melody — that  human  song  so  immensely  transcending  all 
songs  of  larks  and  nightingales — did  not  behave  after  the  natural 
and  well-known  fashion  of  such  creatures.  Whether  they  have  such 
intelligent  and  listening  birds  out  in  the  invisible  I  do  not  know. 
Perhaps  they  do.  Perhaps  these  that  Mr.  Tennyson  saw  were  astrays 
from  that  land  other  than  our  own.  At  any  rate,  they  are  no  birds 
of  ours.  And,  don't  you  see,  we  are  just  enough  confused  as  to 
whose  they  are — whose  and  whence — to  feel  ourselves  carried  out 
and  away  and  far  away  from  the  strictly  terrestrial.  It  is  precisely 
another  other-than-ourselves  contrivance.  We  go  astride  of  such 
magnificent  negatives  and  mind-puzzlers,  and  ride  the  realms  of  air 


YALE  LECTURES.  237 

— not  into  the  invisible  literally,  perhaps,  but  into  very  imposing 
mist,  wherein  the  effect  on  us  is  considerably  as  though  we  had 
become  conversant  now  with  trans-mundane  territories. 

If  I  might  take  time  for  it,  I  could  show  you  this  same  thing, 
this  arriving  at  the  supersensible  by  earthly  means,  in  a  much  more 
striking  development  in  Coleridge's  Christabel — where  quite  a 
number  of  weird  and  unclassifiable  occurrences  come  in  to  lift  our 
feet  away  from  the  ground  and  make  us  know  that,  wherever  we 
are,  we  are  not  in  this  world  merely.  For  instance,  there  is  a  mas- 
tiff that  every  night  of  his  life,  when  the  castle  bell  strikes  twelve, 
puts  forth  just  sixteen  howls,  twelve  for  the  hours  and  four  for  the 
quarters.  Where  did  such  a  dog  as  that  come  from,  every  rational 
human  being  proceeds  to  ask.  And  how  is  it  that  that  barking  of 
his  is  done  always  at  the  very  hour,  the  awful  hour,  when  his  mis- 
tress of  the  castle  died  years  and  years  ago  ?  Now  Coleridge  has 
half  a  dozen  or  more  inventions  like  this  in  that  poem.  And  what 
is  the  result?  He  does  not  take  you  to  any  particular  shore,  land, 
coast,  or  remote  station  of  the  universe  by  these  inventions,  and 
definitely  land  you  ;  but  he  takes  you  away  from  this  time-land ; 
yes,  that  is  the  trick  of  it ;  he  carries  you  off  and  leaves  you  no- 
where, and  the  nearest  you  can  come  to  any  description  of  your 
feelings,  is  to  say — "  Well,  here  I  am,  but  where  am  I  !  "  and  that 
is  a  pretty  good  description  of  the  unearthly,  the  beyond,  the 
invisible,  in  finite  terms. 

But  not  merely  in  night-howling  mastiffs  and  in  birds  bewitched 
by  poets'  melodies,  may  the  "  country  other  than  our  own,"  and 
the  unperceivable  people  and  personages  off  here  "  other  than  our- 
selves," "  that  make  for  righteousness  "  some  of  them,  and  some  of 
them  not,  be  expressed,  but  in  single  words  also  something  of  the 
same  sort  can  be  done.  If  I  say  of  God,  he  is  infinite,  that  is, 
not-finite,  I  think  I  have  made  on  your  mind  a  decided  impression 
concerning  him  as  he  really  is.  I  have  taken  an  earth-born,  finite 
word,  and  negatived  it,  and  doing  that,  have  pitched  you  out  of 
the  finite  totally.  To  be  sure  I  have  given  you  no  more  spot  to 
land  on  than  had  Noah's  weary  dove,  but  that  is  precisely  what  I 
aimed  at.  If  Noah's  dove  had  found  a  place  for  his  anxious  feet, 
he  would  not  have  thought  it  much  of  a  flood  that  he  was  sailing 
over ;  and  if  my  in-finite,  should  set  you  down  on  any  determinate 
thing  or  spot,  you  would  certainly  underestimate  the  divine  ;  just 
as  when  the  Creeds  say  "persons,"   and  "three  persons  in  one 


238  YALE  LECTURES. 

nature,"  they  (according  to  Mr.  Arnold)  almost  minimize  the 
Being  they  are  describing.  The  truth  is,  as  soon  as  we  have  said 
persons,  we  must  pour  in  the  glorious  confusion  of  our  negatives, 
like  non-finite,  and  start  the  people  out  of  their  comfortable  earth- 
built  snuggeries,  (like  persons  and  so  on)  and  set  them  careering — 
not  to  say  careening — across  the  uncharted  expanse  of  the  Bound- 
less. We  want  to  leave  them  about  where  that  old  definition  of 
infinite  space  leaves  the  mind ;  namely,  "  Infinite  space  is  that 
whose  center  is  everywhere  and  whose  circumference  nowhere." 
That  is  just  about  what  it  is.  Gentlemen,  I  am  not  the  man  to 
deny  the  legitimacy  of  Creed  terms ;  person,  three  persons,  and  all 
the  rest.  I  do  insist,  though,  that  while  you  are  regaling  yourself 
with  your  small  bottles  of  water,  you  shall  not  be  permitted  to  think 
that  in  those  neat  and  delightful  half-pints  you  have  the  ocean. 
And  in  order  to  prevent  your  thinking  it,  I  say,  let  the  ocean  in  on 
you,  and  paddle  confusedly  about  in  it  and  get  to  know  its  great- 
ness. Often  one  and  the  same  word,  or  expression,  may  be  made 
to  have  in  it  a  clear,  finite  affirmative,  and  withal  a  flicker  of  the 
infinite  ;  as  where  the  Nicene  Creed  declares  the  eternal  generation 
of  the  Son  of  God.  Generation  is  a  terrestrial  term,  and  a  term  of 
beginning  applied  in  the  non-terrestrial  field,  where  terrestial  flavors 
are  impertinent;  but  when  you  add  the  word  "  eternal,"  and  deny 
a  beginning  to  the  Son  of  God  you  have  somewhat  purged  your 
terminology  of  its  earthly  taint  and  made  it  serviceable  in  that 
region  of  the  immaterial. 

You  have  often  noticed  the  clear  western  sky  illuminated  by 
the  sun  descending,  or  quite  gone  down,  and  have  felt  that  that  sky 
led  you  off  and  back  and  through  and  on,  as  to  the  very  throne  of 
God.  But  I  submit  you  do  not  get  so  far  back  in  a  clear  sky  as 
you  do  in  a  sunset  sky  that  is  heavily  clouded,  but  is  revealed,  a 
touch  here  and  a  touch  there,  through  rents  in  those  cloud-forms. 
How  deep  and  holy  and  sometimes  awful  in  their  splendor  are  those 
narrow  in-looks.  Gentlemen,  our  language  of  the  supernatural, 
unseen  and  illimitable  are  cloud-terms ;  in  which  there  are  hints 
of  those  Beyonds  :  mere  hints,  rents,  partings  of  the  finite,  in-looks 
therefore,  on-looks,  through-looks,  all  the  more  intense  and  over- 
powering because  thus  framed  in  ; — as  in  picture-galleries  you  see 
better  by  looking  through  tubes. 

I  make  a  turn  now  in  my  general  subject  and  come  up  to 
vagueness  in  language  from  another  direction. 


YALE  LECTURES.  239 

When  I  was  discoursing  on  music  a  little  back,  I  made  the 
point  that  the  effect  of  music  is  preeminently  emotional,  rather 
than  intellectual ;  an  impression  on  feeling,  without  any  ideas  car- 
ried over  into  the  mind.  I  now  have  to  say  that  while  language  is 
certainly  a  vehicle  of  ideas,  and  carries  swarms  of  them  into  hosts 
of  minds,  clear  ones,  splendidly  clear  and  satisfying  sometimes  ;  it 
also  in  innumerable  instances  consents  to  be  like  music  exactly  ;  and, 
while  it  talks  on,  and  sounds  intelligent  enough,  as  a  matter  of  fact 
secures  in  the  listener  emotionalism  only,  and  no  sense  of  ideas 
whatever.  And  that  service  of  language  is  as  great  as  any  other, 
and  ought  not  to  be  spoken  against  as  though  it  were  something 
unsolid  and  beneath  human  beings ;  especially  educated  human 
beings,  like  theologues  in  their  third  year,  or  learned  professors  in 
their  many  years.  My  mind  is  that  great  men  who  are  void  of  just 
this  mooniness  do  miss  one  of  their  chief  bignesses,  and  had  better 
begin  right  off  to  size  out  into  the  obscure,  and  take  impres- 
sions that  they  cannot  give  much  account  of  at  the  time, — 
impressions,  I  mean,  that  they  do  not  at  the  moment  trace  to  ideas 
received. 

Now  language  often  prevails  by  the  musical  quality  in  it  con- 
siderably. My  yacht  on  the  waves  rocks  me  in  the  loveliest  curves 
of  motion  conceivable.  And  rhythm  in  language  rocks  me.  And 
rhyme  rocks  me.  And  the  kiss  and  kiss  of  Hebrew  parallelism  rocks 
me.  And  the  structural  balance  in  the  movement  of  many  a  prose 
writer  rocks  me,  I  find.  I  am  not  intellectual  under  it  —at  least,  it 
is  not  that  feature  of  the  effect  which  I  am  considering  now — I  am 
not  intellectual,  I  am  a  babe  and  rocked.  Robert  Browning  begins 
one  of  his  poems  thus  : — 

Where  the  quiet-colored  end  of  evening  smiles, 
Miles  and  miles, 

and  we  are  all  delighted.  But  why  ?  Because  of  the  clear  scene 
in  it,  of  course,  the  lovely  distance,  the  expansiveness  of  the  whole 
thing  and  the  beauty  spread  over  all.  But  there  is  more  than  that 
in  it.  There  is  a  flow  of  melody.  Hear  those  ravishing  liquids 
and  vowel-sounds  murmur  along  together, — the  evening  smiles, 
miles  and  miles.  And  while  I  am  on  this  passage  let  me  name  to 
you  another  subtle  power  in  it.  By  the  monotony  of  that  melody, 
our  feeling,  unbeknown  to  ourselves,  is  chastened  and  made  seri- 
ous, and  thus  brought  into   accord  with   the   pensiveness  of   the 


240  YALE  LECTURES. 

evening.  We  are  put  into  an  evening  mood,  so  as  to  look  at  the 
quiet-colored  horizon  off  there,  and  at 

The  solitary  pastures  where  the  sheep 

Half-asleep 
Tinkle  homeward  thro'  the  twilight,  stray  or  stop 
As  they  crop — 

to  look  at  the  whole,  I  say,  with  adjusted  and  suitable  eyes.  Now 
Browning  did  not  think  out  all  this  contrivance  of  expression  for 
getting  the  upper  hand  of  us.  No,  it  was  not  stratagem  in  him, 
but  spontaneity, — cultured  spontaneity.  He  felt  thus  and  so  him- 
self, and  he  simply  poured  this  his  feeling  forth ;  and  we  are 
caught.  It  is  not  a  matter  of  ideas  on  either  side, — his  or  ours. 
You  add  up  all  the  volumes  that  Shakespeare  ever  wrote,  and  it 
would  not  begin  to  equal  the  volumes  that  Shakesperian  commenta- 
tors have  written  to  explain  his  cute  ways  of  fascinating  us  ;  whereas 
most  often  he  wasn't  cute  and  intentional  at  all.  Is  a  bird  cute  and 
intentional  when  he  sings  ?  Is  a  flower  full  of  plans  on  us  when  it 
blooms  ?     Is  God  premeditative  and  strategic  when  he  loves  ? 

Now  Brethren,  keep  hold  of  my  exact  point.  I  am  running 
down  ideas,  conscious,  clear  ideas  as  necessary  factors  and  sole  fac- 
tors in  self-expression,  and  in  receiving  impression  from  language. 
Dr.  Elisha  Kane  relates  that  during  one  of  his  long  winters  in  the 
vicinity  of  the  north  pole,  a  certain  sailor  on  his  ship  was  observed 
to  be  weeping  over  Tennyson's  : — 

Break,  break,  break 
At  the  foot  of  thy  crags,  oh  Sea, 
But  the  tender  grace  of  a  day  that  is  dead 
Will  never  come  back  to  me. 

I  never  asked  the  sailor,  but  I  will  engage  that  if  he  had  spent 
his  whole  winter  trying  to  find  out  wherefore  he  cried,  he  could  not 
tell.  He  could  tell  some  things  ;  as  that  the  "  Never  come  back  to 
me,"  started  his  heart  homeward,  and  also  set  him  wondering 
whether  he  should  ever  see  home  again,  and  get  away  from  that  mis- 
erable old  inscrutability,  the  north  pole.  But  it  would  not  have  oc- 
curred to  him  that  Tennyson's  music  was  stealing  into  him,  and  the 
gray  tone  of  the  music,  the  monotony,  the  sombre  refrain ;  also  the 
bright  images  in  the  background  of  the  poem,  on  which  these  gravi- 
ties were  projected  and  made  more  grave  : — also  never  could  he 
have  devised  the  connection  of  thought  between  these  two  lines  : — 


YALE  LECTURES.  241 

Break,  break,  break 
On  thy  cold  gray  stones,  oh  Sea. 

(Just  hear  the  lament  in  those  vowels — "  thy  cold,  gray,  stones, 
oh  Sea  ")  and  these  other  two  lines  of  the  same  verse  : — 

And  I  would  that  my  tongue  could  utter 
The  thoughts  that  arise  in  me. 

What  is  the  connection,  anyhow?  Most  people  cannot  tell.  No 
matter  what  the  connection  is.  Stop  trying  to  get  ideas.  You  can 
cry  without  them,  just  as  well.  The  first  real,  old,  luxuriant  English 
ivy  that  I  ever  saw,  an  ivy  that  covered  every  inch  of  a  church 
tower  several  feet  deep,  was  at  Muckross  Abbey,  in  Ireland ;  and  I 
cried.  What  did  I  do  that  for?  Was  not  that  being  more  mooney 
than  was  really  necessary?  Did  I  cry  under  a  sudden  uncommon 
access  of  ideas  ?  I  never  was  emptier  of  ideas  in  my  life.  Men 
and  Brethren,  do  you  not  know  that  three  quarters  of  the  chords 
that  vibrate  in  us  are  below  our  consciousness  ;  that  more  than  half 
of  our  experiences  come  from  strokes  made  on  those  sub-conscious 
chords ;  that  preaching,  or  old  ivies  never  reach  their  utmost  power 
till  they  reach  them  and  play  on  them ;  that  those  chords  are 
reached  without  ideas  even  better  than  with  them ;  that  a  Creed 
partially  fails,  if,  while  it  states  thoughts  as  clear-cut  as  a  minted 
dollar,  it  does  not  at  the  same  time  start  the  mysterious  depths  in 
us,  the  sleeping  sub-bass  strings,  the  strings  of  mystery,  the  strings 
that  talk  large  and  talk  vague,  like  that  bell-tone  that  I  described  as 
widening  abroad  through  the  infinite  air,  so  spiritual  and  unmeas- 
urable  at  last? 

I  can  tell  now  about  that  ivy  business,  in  part  at  any  rate, 
because  I  have  analyzed  it.  I  have  been  down  into  myself  with  a 
search-warant,  and  after  I  had  read  Browning's  "  Love  Among  The 
Ruins,"  I  did  the  same  thing ;  and  I  have  no  objection  to  self- 
search,  in  itself  considered ;  but  I  resist  the  doctrine  that  emotions 
not  thought-born  are  illegitimate  ;  bastards  and  not  sons  ;  that  there- 
fore language  must  bend  its  whole  strength  to  begin  clear ;  when 
the  most  superfine  and  celestial  instrument  of  expression  that  we 
know  of,  (music)  has  its  main  strength  in  not  being  clear ;  I  resist 
the  doctrine  for  many  reasons.  The  first  reason  is,  that  I  know 
better — know  it  by  having  thought  it  out,  and  know  it  by  a  hundred 
experiences  of  my  own.  The  second  reason  is,  that  everbody  else 
knows  better,  if  he  is  old  enough  to  examine  his  own  contents  and 


242  YALE  LECTURES. 

will  calmly  do  it  with  this  matter  in  his  mind.  The  third  reason  is, 
that  religion  cannot  live  without  my  doctrine  of  vagueness.  It  may 
have  a  name  to  live,  in  the  form  of  cold-blooded,  finite  and  small 
propositions  ;  but  religion  in  its  fulness  and  full  power  is  a  thing 
saturated  with  awe  ;  and  how  can  awe  keep  itself  alive  while  look- 
ing up  simply  into  the  small  face  of  a  definitely-stated  immaterial, 
invisible,  immeasurable  and  divine.  My  fourth  reason  is,  that  if 
preaching  is  content  to  be  propositional,  lucid,  exact  and  religious 
in  the  canned  form  only ;  an  eternal  display  of  cameos ;  it  can  have 
no  such  efficacy  among  men  as  it  ought  to.  When  you  come  to 
that  particular  kind  of  work  and  declare  it  the  only  kind  that  has  any 
right  to  be  done,  you  have  practically  and  in  principle  gone  over  to 
materialistic  scepticism ;  which  has  settled  down  on  the  theory  that 
only  the  thing  which  can  be  brought  into  measurable  dimensions, 
and  really  grasped,  is  a  thing  at  all,  and  entitled  to  our  respect. 

Now  Brethren,  in  the  progress  of  my  thought  to-day  I  hope 
I  have  not  accidentally  disrespected  clarity  in  expression,  and 
those  extreme  labors  of  clarification  which  are  so  congenial  to 
many  minds  both  eminent  and  common,  in  the  pulpit  and  out  of  it. 
I  listen  to  them  sometimes  when  they  are  simplifying  things  and 
putting  them  up  in  minute  packages, — "  breaking  the  bread  up  small 
and  putting  it  on  a  low  shelf,"  so  that  the  most  undeveloped  of  us 
can  get  the  good  of  it — I  listen  to  them,  and  watch  them,  and 
notice  how  manfully  they  contend  with  the  universal  haze  of  things, 
with  a  thorough-going  gusto ;  and  when  with  much  tugging  they 
push  back  the  line  of  haze  one  space  farther,  and  widen  the  hori- 
zon of  the  definite,  I  am  as  pleased  as  anybody ,  but  I  cannot  help 
reminding  them  every  now  and  then,  that  what  I  have  often  noticed 
in  the  brightest  days  of  the  year  in  London,  may  be  noticed  also 
in  those  areas  of  thought  which  they  have  most  triumphantly  clari- 
fied and  flooded  with  daylight,  to  wit ; — the  very  daylight  never 
fails  to  have  a  sweet  blue  haze  in  it.  Look  up  into  the  dome  of  St. 
Paul's,  and  there  it  is,  and  no  mistake.  Out  of  doors  I  said,  What 
a  perfect  and  shining  day  this  is,  in  this  celebrated  old  fog-land  ! 
But  all  the  while  the  haze  was  there  ;  and  likewise  in  subjects,  when 
you  have  reached  the  acme  of  translucency,  you  need  to  wash  your 
sunshine  once  more  ;  and  then  and  moreover,  we  all  know,  and 
these  gentlemen  themselves  admit,  that  a  few  miles  back  in  the 
subjects  which  they  have  so  cleared,  there  begins  a  gloaming  which 
deepens  back  into  midnight. 


YALE  LECTURES.  243 

It  is  interesting  to  remember  that  every  word  they  use  is 
stocked  with  several  meanings  and  is  likely  to  be  a  bit  muddled  on 
that  account.  First  of  all,  it  has  more  or  less  of  its  primary  and 
physical  meaning,  the  taste  of  the  earth  from  which  it  sprung ;  and 
some  man  who  listens  to  them  will  detect  that  aboriginal  flavor. 
Next,  the  word  has  lingering  in  it  its  historical  meaning,  the  savors 
it  has  picked  up  in  its  passage  down  ages  and  ages  of  use  ;  and 
some  listener  will  be  ferretting  out  that.  Next,  if  it  so  happens 
that  the  word  is  an  inspired  one,  because  the  man  who  utters  it  is  a 
temple  of  the  Holy  Ghost,  it  will  have  in  it  a  God's  meaning, 
which  meaning  perhaps  the  speaker  himself  has  no  thought  of,  and 
which  most  of  his  hearers  also  may  not  perceive,  while  some  truly 
sensitive  and  clairvoyant  perceiver  in  the  assembly  will  get  hold  of 
it.  Next,  (and  finally — for  I  cannot  mention  all  the  contents  and 
cargoes  in  each  word  of  man) — next,  I  say,  that  word  thrown  out 
among  the  people,  is  like  the  shadows  in  a  lake  caused  by  the 
trees,  heights  and  buildings  on  its  banks.  Those  trees,  heights  and 
buildings  are  fixed  and  stationary  things,  in  the  main,  and  are  there- 
fore able  to  cast  stationary  and  restful  shadows,  if  only  they  can 
have  a  restful  surface  on  which  to  cast ;  but  the  lake  is  mobile  and 
unstable — it  lies  still  and  glassy  when  it  wants  to ;  and  then  those 
shadows  look  like  their  originals  on  the  bank ; — then  again  it  rip- 
ples, it  rolls  ;  then  clouds  float  over  and  kill  those  bank-shadows 
altogether ;  and  so  it  shifts  on. 

"The  shadows  on  Loch  Katrine's  breast 
Are  neither  restless  nor  at  rest." 

Thus  words  ;  they  go  out  upon  a  thousand  different  minds  and 
take  their  luck.  Say  Imagination  to  one  man  and  he  scowls ;  say 
it  to  another  and  he  smiles  all  over.  It  is  sometimes  said  that  a 
man  sees  in  Europe  only  what  he  takes  to  Europe.  Well,  a  man 
sees  in  a  word  only  what  he  takes  to  it.  One  day  in  my  congrega- 
tion, Dr.  Horace  Bushnell  took  his  hat  and  left,  in  a  spurt  of  honest 
wrath,  because  I  asked  the  people  to  sing  the  tune  America.  They 
stayed  and  rolled  out  America  with  a  great  noise,  but  he  would  not 
hear  it,  because  it  was  God  Save  the  Queen,  one  of  the  national  airs 
of  England,  stolen  and  rechristened  America.  So  it  is  with  all  things. 
They  have  the  bad  luck  to  fall  on  different  minds,  making  peace 
sometimes,  and  sometimes  a  pother.  I  amused  myself  this  morn- 
ing thinking  about  you  students,  and  what  variegated  impressions  the 


244  YALE  LECTURES. 

sight  of  you  in  a  body  here  in  this  chapel  makes  on  this  miscella- 
neous fringe  of  people,  right,  left,  and  all  around.  I  know  what  I 
think  of  you,  but  Bob  Ingersoll  looks  on  you  with  mingled  pity 
and  contempt.  And  alongside  of  him  sits  a  minister  who  has 
averaged  you  and  concluded  that  you  do  not  seem  as  intellectual 
as  the  students  of  his  day.  So  that  he  is  afraid  the  ministry  is  flat- 
tening out.  Another  minister  knows  better,  he  thinks.  He  says 
you  look  first-rate.  One  brother  out  there  has  himself  had  a  hard 
and  depressing  time  in  the  ministry,  and  your  hopefulness,  as  you 
look  forward  to  your  work,  makes  him  almost  sick.  One  old  min- 
ister, who  has  had  just  strength  enough  left  to  get  to  this  Chapel 
and  sample  a  few  of  my  lectures,  is  mightily  pleased  because  the 
gaps  made  by  the  fading  away  of  the  old  men  are  so  sure  to  be  filled. 
Another  man  weeps  because  you  remind  him  of  his  son  who  died 
while  in  his  divinity  studies.  And  then  the  ladies  over  here  have 
their  views.  Some  of  them  just  mother  you.  Some  have  "  thoughts 
too  deep  for  tears  " — on  William  Wordsworth's  principle,  perhaps — 

To  me  the  meanest  flower  that  blows  can  give 
Thoughts  that  do  often  lie  too  deep  for  tears. 

That  is  the  manifold  picture  you  make,  Gentlemen.  It  is  not  your 
fault.  You  are  solid  and  immutable  enough,  as  an  object.  These 
brick  buildings  are  hardly  more  so.  But  these  minds  that  gauge 
you,  they  are  regular  Loch  Katrines  : — 

In  bright  uncertainty  they  lie, 
Like  future  joys  to  Fancy's  eye, 

and  you  have  to  suffer.  People  find  in  you,  and  in  words,  just 
what  they  take  to  them  and  to  you.  And  that  is  an  element  of 
incertitude  in  language. 

Then  too,  the  clear  speakers,  who  make  a  god  of  clearness  and 
think  there  is  no  other,  for  I  am  addressing  myself  to  their  case  at 
present,  cannot  themselves  define  one  in  a  hundred  of  the  words 
they  use.  They  cannot  define  them  extempore  and  at  the  moment 
when  they  use  them,  nor  later  (ordinarily)  when  they  have  had 
time  to  think  on  them  with  all  their  might,  can  they  define  them. 
When  I  came  to  make  a  Lecture  or  two  for  you  on  Imagination,  I 
thought,  in  decency,  I  ought  to  tell  to  a  dot  what  Imagination  is, 
and  I  found  I  did  not  know.  Then  I  consulted  two  or  three  meta- 
physicians, and  I  found  they  did  not  know.  Then  I  came  back  to 
my  own   wisdom,  took  a  deep  dive  into  my  own  consciousness  and 


YALE  LECTURES.  245 

strove  to  evolve  a  definition  from  what  I  myself  might  inwardly  have 
of  Imagination.  I  evolved  three  corners  of  the  thing — enough  for 
my  purpose  as  a  lecturer — and  the  other  corner  is  under  water  yet. 
Generally  from  two  to  three  corners  are  under.  I  had  all  my  life 
been  wont  to  speak  of  Imagination  ;  and  all  my  life  the  listeners  to 
me  had  conceived  that  they  knew  what  I  meant ;  but  not  a  man  of 
us  could  draw  a  clear  line  around  that  thing,  and  make  it  stand  out 
in  absolute  separateness  from  every  other  human  faculty. 

Such  is  language,  Young  Gentlemen, — the  instrument  we  are  all 
using  so  fully,  and  looking  intelligent  while  we  use  ;  the  instrument 
you  will  do  your  preaching  with  and  draw  up  Creeds  with,  and  wreak 
yourselves  upon  with  great  enthusiasm  sometimes.  Well,  wreak  on. 
I  have  no  objection.  I  myself  have  been  wreaking  on  it  for  the  last 
hour  or  more.  But  let  us  not  pretend  that  these  dice  we  play  with 
are  perfect.  If  only  they  were,  some  questions  would  have  been  set- 
tled thousands  of  years  ago.  But  how  can  they  be  settled  when  the 
coin  of  interchange  is  of  indeterminate  value  ?  How  much  are  those 
dimes  and  half  dollars  and  dollars,  that  are  flying  about  in  such  helter- 
skelter  fashion  ?  Nobody  quite  knows.  Often,  when  a  speaker  passes 
a  dollar,  as  he  supposes,  the  man  in  the  pew  sees  but  ten  cents  in  it. 
And  occasionally  the  speaker's  ten  cents  is  worth  a  hundred  dollars. 
The  fact  is,  language  as  used  is  a  semi-chaotic  flux  of  incertitudes, 
wherein  we  are  exercised  most  wholesomely  for  something  better  yet 
to  come  ;  beatific  visions,  and  other  visions.  Of  course  here  and  there 
in  the  welter  there  emerges  a  limited  spot  of  solid  land  ;  the  ascer- 
tainable and  ascertained  ;  and  on  those  spots  we  sit  down  and  have  a 
dear  good  time.  Not  because  such  unsizable  and  stingy  spots  are  so 
much  in  themselves,  but  being  all  we  have  they  are  valuable  ;  and  be- 
sides, they  show  that  spots  emerged  are  possible  in  our  case.  If  they 
are,  we  may  hope  for  more  of  them  gradually.  At  any  rate,  they  are 
good  spots  to  jump  from  and  take  with  us  when  we  are  called  to  go 
out  of  this  seeing  in  a  glass  darkly  and  knowing  but  in  part. 

Our  little  systems  have  their  day; 
They  have  their  day  and  cease  to  be; 
They  are  but  broken  lights  of  Thee, 
And  Thou,  O  Lord,  art  more  than  they. 

We  have  but  faith;  we  cannot  know; 
For  knowledge  is  of  things  we  see; 
And  yet  we  trust  it  comes  from  Thee, 
A  beam  in  darkness;   let  it  grow. 


246  YALE  LECTURES. 

I  do  not  quote  these  lines  as  accurately  consecutive  to  what  I 
have  just  been  saying,  in  the  form  of  them,  but  because  in  their 
spirit  they  are  consecutive  enough,  and  because  in  them  I  find  that 
mingled  confidence  and  half-pensive  sense  of  limits  which  I  find  to 
be  habitual  within  myself — that  mental  state  which  led  me  this  week 
to  write  out  this  my  last  lecture  to  you  for  this  year.  I  bid  you 
farewell. 
.v 


THE  SERVICE  OF  ART  IN 
RELIGION. 


That  body  of  Christians  with  whom  it  has  been  my  lot  to  be 
connected,  is  infested  by  what  I  consider  a  prejudice  against  the 
use  of  the  beautiful  in  the  service  of  religion  ;  which  prejudice  de- 
clares itself  in  divers  ways,  such  as  : 

First,  an  altogether  too  powerful  array  of  unarchitectural  and 
unadorned  church  edifices  : — edifices  that  may  shelter  the  people 
from  storms,  but  do  not  in  the  least  minister  to  culture,  besides 
being  deficient  in  several  other  respects. 

Secondly,  in  a  strong  dread  of — not  to  say  contempt  for — 
everything  decorative,  or  symbolic,  in  connection  with  religion  and 
religious  worship  ;  the  entire  elaborated  symbolism,  painting,  and 
sculpture  of  the  Church  of  God  at  large,  being  lumped  together  as 
suspicious  and  swept  away  at  a  stroke  : — the  Cross,  as  recalling  the 
passion  of  the  Lord  and  the  deepest  idea  of  the  Christian  life,  being 
repudiated  almost  as  energetically  by  some,  as  the  more  far-fetched 
and  artificial  symbols  whereon  men  have  doted.  There  must  be 
no  sculpture  in  the  house  of  God.  And  there  must  be  no  painting 
— none,  at  least,  that  has  any  meaning  in  it.  There  may  be  frescoes, 
perhaps,  and  in  scattered  instances  profusions  of  color  have  been  let 
in  ;  but  the  rule  has  been  that  the  instant  those  colors  proposed  in 
any  wise  to  express  some  divine  thing,  some  scene  in  the  life  of  the 
Lord,  some  great  historical  figure  like  an  Apostle  or  a  Martyr,  some 
thought  dear  to  the  heart  of  universal  man  ;  that  over-vaulting  am- 
bition has  been  stamped  upon,  and  stamped  to  death.     So,  not' long 


248  YALE  LECTURES. 

ago,  in  a  certain  city  when  I  stepped  in  to  look  at  the  rejuvenated 
interior  of  a  sacred  building  belonging  to  an  historic  and  opulent 
church,  lo  !  I  found  myself  in  a  gorgeous  bar-room,  or  saloon,  so 
far  as  the  coloring  was  concerned ;  and  not  even  the  well-chosen 
texts  of  Scripture  strung  along  below  the  cornice  in  suitable,  strong 
colors,  could  in  anywise  begin  to  redeem  the  thing  and  make  a 
church  of  it. 

Thirdly,  our  antipathy  to  the  beautiful,  shows  itself  in  a  four- 
square resistance  of  all  hands  to  that  most  serviceable  of  the  arts, 
Christian  music,  in  its  higher  forms — in  those  forms,  that  is,  which 
represent  as  no  other  contrivance  of  expression  can,  the  inward  life 
of  man,  in  its  multiformity,  multiplexity  and  immeasurable  yearning. 

Fourthly,  we  are  shy  of  all  liturgical  advance  among  us,  sus- 
pecting that  if  public  worship  starts  out  deliberately  and  consciously 
to  be  decorous  and  perhaps  beautiful,  some  enervation  will  manage 
to  creep  into  our  piety,  some  luxuriousness,  some  esthetic  volup- 
tuousness, at  any  rate  some  stiffness  of  formalism  and  resulting 
awful  chill  of  death. 

These  are  some  of  the  tokens  of  our  denominational  suspicious- 
ness towards  the  beautiful.  Perhaps  there  are  others ;  but  these 
are  enough  to  indicate  our  trend.  If  I  have  seemed  to  speak 
pointedly  of  this  matter,  and  with  a  flavor  of  disrespect,  it  is  not 
because  I  want  to  be  impudent  or  unfair  or  unloyal  to  my  denomi- 
nation. No ;  what  I  am  most  after,  is  to  make  the  thing  I  mean 
stand  out  and  be  distinctly  visible.  That  I  am  not  unfair,  or  un- 
appreciative  of  these  views  whereof  I  have  spoken,  will  appear,  it 
may  be,  as  I  proceed  now  to  name  some  of  the  sources  of  our  Con- 
gregational aversion  to  esthetics — an  aversion,  I  may  add,  wherein 
we  have  the  sympathy  of  some  other  pious  bodies  of  people. 

I.  To  begin  with,  we  are  the  descendants,  both  lineal  and 
spiritual,  (numbers  of  us  lineal  and  all  of  us  spiritual)  of  a  certain 
historical,  much-buffeted,  resolute  and  solid  people,  who  by  the 
grace  of  God  discovered  that  the  religion  of  their  clay  and  land  had 
gone  into  affiliation  and  whoredom  (  an  affiliation  that  amounted  to 
a  whoredom)  with  Art — fine  art — the  arts  of  expression  and  impres- 
sion— so  that  in  that  three-fold,  good  classification  of  all  thinkable 
realities  which  Plato  made  out  for  us  ;  namely,  the  True,  the  Beauti- 
ful and  the  Good — the  Beautiful  had  gone  into  the  saddle,  and  was 
riding  the  other  two — a  most  preposterous  and  profane  thing,  our 
Fathers  said.     So  they  shouldered  in  to  right  that.     And  after  the 


YALE  LECTURES.  249 

frequent  manner  of  reformers,  they  righted  it  more  than  was  neces- 
sary. Not  merely  did  they  unhorse  the  Beautiful  and  seat  Religion 
in  her  vacant  place,  but  they  proceeded  to  have  Religion  ride  over 
the  prostrate  Beautiful  till  her  breath  was  clean  gone  out ;  her 
sculptures  and  paintings  and  millinery  and  pageants  and  even  her 
innocent  decorums,  they  annihilated  ;  and  her  great  and  venerable 
cathedrals — the  four  walls  that  had  harbored  all  the  aforesaid  frip- 
pery— came  in  for  a  share  of  their  mighty  disrespect.  The  reality 
in  that  movement  was  its  sound  intention  to  exalt  religion,  by  sepa- 
rating it  from  its  too  great  reliance  on  the  esthetical,  and  establishing 
it  on  its  own  colossal  and  very  sufficient  foundations. 

The  noise  of  that  contest  has  died  away,  and  all  is  still  as  we 
look  back  there,  but  the  heat  of  it  keeps  up,  and  it  makes  us  who 
are  successors  of  those  men — I  will  not  say  hot,  but  obstinate.  And 
yet,  you  see,  there  was  an  idea  there.  Even  if  our  Fathers  could 
have  been  persuaded  to  confess  that  Art  has  a  legitimate  function 
on  earth,  and  even  in  religion  a  good  function,  they  would  have 
gone  straight  on  to  add  : — Nevertheless,  as  things  now  are,  the 
Church  must  be  pulled  away  from  all  that,  and  totally  weaned. 
Only  thus  can  her  salvation  be  secured,  in  the  present  emergency. 
Moderate  drinking  may  be  defensible,  but  she,  the  Church,  has  got 
where  she  cannot  drink  moderately.  Her  lust  of  beauty  is  too 
strong.  If  she  takes  one  drop  she  is  drunken.  Let  her  be  put  on 
to  bread  and  water,  and  there  kept — perhaps  forever,  for  her  soul's 
health. 

II.  Moreover,  the  Fathers  did  not  make  this  trenchant  gen- 
eralization against  Art  on  an  inspection  of  English  Christianity 
alone,  but  on  a  survey  of  the  ages.  They  looked  abroad  and  afar 
and  they  noticed  that  the  submergence  of  religion  in  the  esthetic 
element  had  occurred  a  good  many  times  and  in  many  nations,  and 
they  surmised  that  there  was  a  law  of  deterioration  therein  : — a  rule 
that  a  religion  must  grow  effeminate  and  carnal  if  she  does  not 
eschew  Art  pretty  thoroughly.  Witness  Romanism,  and  the  great 
Church  of  the  East.  Witness  Greece,  where  fine  Art  reached  such 
a  splendor  as  the  world  never  saw  before.  Did  her  Art  save  her? 
Did  it  not  rather  ungird  her,  slacken  her  sinews,  enfeeble  her  hold 
on  higher  ideas  than  that  of  beauty,  and  enfeeble  their  hold  on  her, 
so  that  she  must  rot  away  in  her  entire  substance  and  cease  forever 
from  among  men.  Go  into  the  museum  at  Naples  and  look  at  the 
art-works  of  exhumed  Pompeii.  Mark  their  excellence.  Notice 
17 


250  YALE  LECTURES. 

what  a  sense  of  the  Beautiful  that  Pompeiian  people  must  have  had . 
But  observe  at  the  same  time  their  unspeakable  demoralization — 
their  obscenity  even  in  their  art ;  their  fitness  to  be  suddenly  buried 
by  the  wrath  of  God,  using  his  volcanoes  to  do  the  work.  That  was 
the  way  the  Fathers  were  prone  to  reason.  And  we  cannot  deny 
that  great  devotion  to  beauty  and  Art,  and  great  moral  enfeeblement 
and  corruption,  have  existed  together  often,  whether  one  was  the 
cause  of  the  other  or  not.  There  was  Lord  Byron,  there  was  Rob- 
ert Burns,  there  was  Tom  Moore,  there  was  the  poet  Shelley,  and 
numbers  more,  three  times  worse  than  they,  in  whom  the  feeling  for 
beauty,  the  sensitiveness  to  beauty,  and  the  power  of  beautiful  ex- 
pression, the  art  instinct,  was  exceeding  strong.  Burns,  Byron  and 
Moore  even  wrote  religious  hymns,  and  did  it  well — much  better 
than  the  average  saint  ever  did ;  but  all  these  refined  gifts  of  theirs 
did  not  make  high-toned  men  of  them.  Beauty  and  the  love  of 
beauty  did  not  establish  the  kingdom  of  God  in  their  hearts. 

I  do  not  know  but  I  am  getting  out  the  Puritan's  argument  for 
him  in  a  way  so  strong  and  fascinating  that  I  can  never  overthrow  it. 
But  I  want  to  be  fair,  you  see.  I  had  rather  make  it  overstrong  and 
take  the  consequences,  than  to  be  mean  enough  to  make  it  too  weak. 

III.  Again  :  Puritanism  claims  sometimes,  when  it  argues  this 
subject,  that  the  passing  of  our  ideas,  thoughts,  feelings,  forth  into 
material  embodiment  in  architecture,  painting  and  all  the  rest,  does 
by  the  necessity  of  the  case  make  a  materializing  influence  on  the 
mind — an  influence  adverse  to  spirituality.  That  is  the  supreme 
peril  of  artists,  it  is  thought.  They  deal  with  form.  That  is,  their 
business  is  to  formulate.  If  they  could  only  be  content  to  leave  all 
human  ideas  and  feelings  unformulated,  not  made  visible,  not 
physicalized,  in  color  and  in  lines  and  in  all  the  cunning  contrivances 
of  their  craft,  all  would  be  well ;  but  the  plastic  instinct  in  them  is 
uncommonly  strong  and  gives  them  no  peace  until  they  have  re- 
duced the  ideal  to  a  finite  and  sensuous  statement  of  some  sort ;  and 
they  must  take  the  curse  of  this  their  own  restless  inability  to  just 
abide  in  the  ideal,  the  unstated,  the  unphysicalized.  If  only  while 
they  were  stating  they  did  not  supremely  concentrate  their  attention 
on  form,  they  might  still  be  saved ;  but  it  lies  in  the  nature  of  their 
business  that  they  should  thus  concentrate  ;  they  would  not  be  artists 
unless  they  did.  So  on  they  go,  poor  things,  preparing  the  means 
of  a  quite  possible  ruin  for  themselves,  and  an  equal  danger  for  all 
people  who  are  very  much  given  to  beholding  their  beautiful  works. 


YALE  LECTURES.  251 

The  physicalization  of  the  mind,  incident  to  all  artistic  expres- 
sion : — that  is  the  argument. 

And  similar  to  that  is  the  notion  that  many  great  Christian 
ideas,  when  circumscribed  by  the  terms,  color  and  what  not,  which 
the  artist  uses,  are  so  much  circumscribed  as  to  be  belittled  and 
almost  or  quite  profaned.  Let  them  remain  forever  unexpressed. 
In  the  Vatican  Palace  at  Rome,  I  recollect  seeing  somewhere  a 
representation  of  God  the  Father,  by  Michael  Angelo,  if  I  remember 
aright.  God  the  Father,  was  set  forth  by  this  most  insufficient  and 
awfully  minimizing  device ;  namely,  the  head  and  shoulders  of  a 
respectable  looking  old  man.  There  are  many  things  which  one 
might  say  about  such  a  performance  as  that ; — and  some  things 
might  be  said  in  regard  to  the  frequent  efforts  of  ancient  art  to 
portray  our  blessed  Lord  ;  but  all  I  need  to  say  just  now  is  what  all 
of  us  do  probably  feel,  that  while  numberless  religious  truths,  events 
and  persons,  cannot  be  put  into  form  adequately,  some  cannot  at 
all,  and  had  therefore  better  be  carefully  let  alone,  even  by  such  a 
magnificent  genius  as  Michael  Angelo,  and  much  more  by  that 
swarm  of  lesser  men  who  have  ventured  upon  divine  themes. 

Well,  people  of  the  Puritan  way  of  thinking,  enlarge  that  obser- 
vation to  cover  all  efforts  of  art  in  the  religious  field.  Religion  suf- 
fers, they  say,  by  being  subjected  to  expression  in  the  close-cramped 
terminology  of  the  painter's  and  sculptor's  art.  I  suppose  they 
would  concede  a  little  more  to  music.  So  I  should  hope,  at  all 
events. 

IV.  Once  more,  we  Congregationalists  revert  admiringly  and 
lovingly  to  a  certain  solid,  world-impressing  cultus  generations  back 
in  our  denominational  history ;  an  immensely  seminal  affair  as  re- 
gards the  civilization  that  has  unfolded  on  this  continent,  to  our 
great  glory  before  all  nations  ;  a  cultus  full  of  God,  and  every  con- 
ceivable moral  tonic.  But  that  very  cultus,  we  remember,  was 
associated  with  great  bareness  of  Art,  as  was  natural  in  view  of  our 
very  Protestant  origin  in  England  (as  already  explained),  and  so  now 
we  find  ourselves  tender  in  our  hearts  towards  bareness  of  Art,  and 
not  unwilling  to  have  it  perpetuated  among  us,  as  it  visibly  is ; 
we  impute  to  that  bareness  the  renown  of  that  great  cultus  back 
there,  with  which  it  was  connected  ;  we  are  under  the  beguilement 
of  association.  A  white  meeting-house  is  a  staring  discord  of  color 
in  any  green  landscape,  and  nothing  better  than  a  monotony  in 
any  landscape  of  snow ;  but  those  redoubtable  progenitors  of  ours 


252  YALE  LECTURES. 

worshiped  in  such,  and  we  want  to.  If  they  had  been  puling  creat- 
ures, and  nothing  to  be  proud  of,  we  might  have  given  in  on  the 
white  meeting-house  question  and  let  the  laws  of  color  have  their 
way  and  our  church  edifices  melt  harmoniously  into  the  color-tones 
of  Nature ;  but  they  were  not  puling,  but  great,  and  they  shall  not 
be  dishonored  by  having  anything  abolished  that  belongs  to  the 
thought  of  them  and  their  life,  whether  building,  psalm  tune,  ritual, 
ecclesiasticism,  or  anything  else.  A  quite  noble  feeling  in  itself 
considered,  no  doubt.  The  only  question  is  whether  that  ancient 
cultus  cannot  be  preserved  in  the  core  and  power  of  it,  without  an 
everlasting  sanctification  of  its  incidentals  in  this  manner. 

V.  Another  thing.  Our  Fathers  were  burdened  by  great  prac- 
tical tasks  in  this  new  country,  which  consumed  their  entire  vigor, 
so  that  it  was  not  possible  for  them  to  indulge  themselves  in  even 
innocent  flirtations  with  Art — and  we  their  descendants  are  in 
something  of  the  same  difficulty. 

VI.  Moreover,  in  those  scattered  instances  where  we  have 
emancipated  ourselves  from  that  primeval  art  a  little,  we  sometimes 
have  committed  the  fundamental  mistake  of  discarding  utility  for 
the  sake  of  beauty,  building  fine  churches  under  a  supreme  medie- 
val impulse,  which  were  indeed  very  fine  to  look  upon,  but  very 
faulty  in  regard  to  air  and  light  and  hearing  :  all  essentials  to  healthy 
worship.  Also  in  music,  when  we  have  pulled  away  from  the  tune 
"Mear,"  and  from  "China,"  and  from  other  like  solemnizing  strains 
wherein  the  ancients  worshiped,  we  have  occasionally  been  taken 
with  headiness  and  vaporing,  (not  to  say  capering)  and  have  let 
music  run  away  with  us ;  and  in  the  matter  of  decorations  (as  in 
that  saloon  church  that  I  inspected)  we  have  sometimes  done  things 
that  make  the  simplicity  of  the  Fathers  seem  good  and  sweet.  All 
mistakes  of  that  sort  get  quoted  profusely,  of  course,  as  so  many 
arguments  against  mingling  esthetics  with  religion.  I  have  no  time 
to  make  a  list  of  these  mistakes.  Neither  have  I  time  to  draw  out 
all  the  other  strong  points  made  by  the  Puritan  reasoner  on  the 
subject  of  Art  and  Religion.  I  will  only  add  on  this  general  branch 
of  my  theme  : 

VII.  That  we,  the  Congregationalists,  have  no  such  special 
connections  with  a  transatlantic  Christian  body,  as  the  Protestant 
Episcopalians  and  the  Romanists  have ;  so  that  while  they  are 
greatly  influenced,  on  the  side  of  sacred  art,  by  the  art  culture  of 
those  foreign  bodies,  we  have  the  advantage  of  almost  no  foreign 


YALE   LECTURES.  253 

influence  whatever.  Their  church  art  is  almost  dominated  by  the 
old-world  civilization.  Whereinsoever,  under  the  limitations  of 
American  life,  they  can  expatiate  in  Art,  they  are  apt  to  expatiate 
along  historic  and  accredited  lines.  Among  us,  on  the  other  hand, 
each  parish  committee  expatiates  along  its  own  lines.  Not  only  are 
the  committee  mostly  unconscious  of  the  art-wisdom  that  for  ages 
has  been  accumulating  in  foreign  lands,  but  they  are  largely  una- 
ware of  what  wisdom  has  happened  to  accumulate  here  in  their  own 
denomination ;  because  the  denomination  is,  perhaps,  the  least 
organized,  and  the  least  compacted  into  a  corporate  consciousness, 
of  any  on  the  continent.  In  matters  doctrinal  we  manage  to  diffuse 
through  the  whole  body  the  sense  of  the  whole  ;  but  in  matters  of 
religious  art  we  diffuse  much  less,  so  that  misbuilt  church  edifices 
and  misconceived  rituals,  and  misbegotten  church  music,  and  in- 
expressive and  indefensible  ornamentations,  and  a  stiff-necked  local- 
ism, are  more  common  among  us  than  is  agreeable. 

My  Brethren,  I  make*  a  complete  turn  now,  against  this  whole 
prejudice  in  regard  to  Art.  That  side  has  had  the  floor  long  enough. 
I  perceive  its  plausibilities.  I  acknowledge  the  realities  that  are 
sprinkled  along  through  its  argument.  I  agree  that  as  between 
Religion  and  Art,  art  must  give  way  to  religion  in  every  contest.  It 
must,  and  it  ought  to.  Moreover  it  does.  Sooner  or  later  it  does. 
And  it  always  will.  For  religion  is  superior  to  art.  We  can  live 
without  art.     We  cannot  live  without  religion. 

But  I  contend  that  God  meant  art  to  be  the  handmaid  of  religion, 
and  if,  in  any  instance,  they  are  found  to  be  adverse  one  to  the 
other,  it  is  the  work  of  perverse  men  and  Satan ;  even  as  good 
marriages  are  sometimes  muddled  by  intermeddlers,  and  men  and 
women  who  are  made  to  pull  together  do  not. 

On  the  general  question  of  beauty  and  its  function,  and  whether 
it  has  a  function,  I  submit  the  following  observations.  I  hope  they 
will  go  to  your  hearts.  Even  if  they  do  not  convince  you,  may 
they  go  to  your  hearts  and  trouble  you  and  start  inquiry. 

First,  what  does  it  mean  that  a  perception  of  the  Beautiful, 
and  a  sensitiveness  to  the  Beautiful,  is  a  universal  feature  of  the 
human  race?  Given  any  development  whatever,  that  feature 
emerges.  The  lowest  savage  has  his  esthetics,  such  as  they  are. 
An  animal  has  not.  The  beaver  and  the  bird  and  the  squirrel  and 
the  bee  do  some  praisworthy  building.  The  carpentry  of  the  beaver 
will  bear  examination,  as  well  as  the  architecture  of  Giotto.     The 


254  YALE    LECTURES. 

nest  of  the  bird  and  the  honey-cell  of  the  bee  and  the  structure  of 
the  coral  are  in  curves,  and  have  that  appeal  to  our  sense  of  beauty. 
But  it  was  not  the  beauty  of  the  curves  that  those  creatures  intended  ; 
their  utility,  rather,  if  they  intended  anything  (which  they  did  not.) 
The  bird's  curved  nest  fits  his  body  snug  and  good ;  and  makes 
him  feel  well  in  his  long  broodings  there  in  the  woods.  And  the 
cell  of  the  bee  is  good  structure.  And  so  on.  As  to  intention,  all 
that  was  in  the  God  who  made  the  creature  and  fitted  him  to  do 
wise  things  without  being  wise.  But  even  God  seems  not  to  have 
intended  beauty  in  this  matter  so  much  as  use  ;  unless  you  go  clear 
back  and  say — he  made  the  bird  in  curves  instead  of  rectangularly, 
In  <  ause  curved  birds  are  most  beautiful;  and  then  having  curved 
creatures  on  hand,  inspired  those  creatures  to  fashion  their  homes 
to  correspond.  But  what  I  wish  to  get  to  is,  that  man  alone  among 
creatures  has  esthetic  perception  and  sensibility.  He  knows  a 
zig-zag  when  he  sees  it,  and  he  does  not  like  its  look.  He  knows 
that  certain  colors  do  not  blend  and  that  others  do.  And  the  un- 
blended jar  him.  The  blended  affect  him  like  music.  He  knows 
the  difference  between  a  space  enclosed  by  an  arch  and  a  space 
enclosed  by  right  lines,  and  evermore  gravitates  to  the  arch.  It  is 
of  no  account  for  the  present,  why  he  does  it ;  I  simply  say  he  does 
it.  And  what  does  it  mean  that  he  is  forever  doing  those  things  ? 
Why  did  God  make  him  in  just  that  fashion?  In  order  that  he 
should  eschew  the  Beautiful  and  turn  it  to  no  account  in  his  own 
development,  and  make  no  use  of  it  in  the  way  of  joy?  Did  God 
give  hunger  in  order  that  we  should  never  eat,  and  ears  in  order 
that  we  never  hear,  and  feet  for  the  solemn  purpose  that  we  always 
sit  still?  No,  all  constitutional  faculties,  love  of  beauty  among  the 
rest,  are  for  something ;  that  is,  to  be  exercised. 

Secondly,  why  has  the  Creator  created  such  a  delightful  world 
and  universe  as  this  all  about  us?  It  looks  as  though  he  himself 
were  a  beauty-lover.  Of  course  he  is.  Shall  he  make  a  beauty- 
lover — man — and  not  be  in  that  respect  like  his  man?  Is  that 
credible?  If  God  does  not  like  rainbows  and  the  gracious  sweep 
of  horizons,  and  the  sparkle  of  dewdrops,  and  the  tinges,  tints  and 
celestial  purities  of  skies,  why  does  he  flood  such  fairnesses  forth  ? 
Also,  why  has  he  established  that  unchangeable  mathematical  basis 
on  which  musical  harmonies  repose,  if  he  had  not  real  interest  in 
harmony.  Then,  too,  why  does  he  make  this  overwhelming  appeal 
of  created  beauty  to  us,  if  he  did  not  desire  us  to  respond  to  it?     Is 


YALE   LECTURES.  255 

God  a  man  that  he  should  be  a  tempter,  and  lead  his  feeble  offspring 
into  that  which  must  injure  them? 

Thirdly,  why  did  he  do  a  similar  venturesome  thing  and  impel 
his  chosen  writers  of  the  Bible  to  walk  abroad  upon  the  creation  in 
such  unrestrainable  delight  in  its  beauties?  The  more  he  inspired 
them  the  more  they  put  forth  just  that  trait.  When  he  left  them 
alone  to  write  honest  history,  in  the  exercise  of  their  own  honest 
faculties,  there  was  nothing  particularly  esthetic,  imaginative,  poetic, 
ideal,  tuneful,  lyrical  in  their  movement  ;  but  the  moment  he  Idled 
them  with  his  Spirit,  for  some  transcendent  spiritual  purpose,  they 
were  lifted  out  of  all  that.  Their  language  became  cadenced,  it 
was  singing,  they  rhymed.  Next,  they  tilled  their  tuneful  outtlow 
with  personalizations  of  the  forms  and  forces  of  Nature,  and  with 
those  personalizations  they  affectionately  communed,  as  with  very 
persons. 

Next,  they  filled  all  creation  with  God,  and  made  it  alive  ;  the 
thunders  were  his  voice,  the  clouds  and  the  thick  darkness  were  Ins 
pavilion,  the  stars  were  his  tlocks  which  he  led  out  shepherd-like 
— in  short,  their  utterances  were  supremely  beautiful.  Poor  old 
Jacob  when  he  was  dying,  had  no  natural  strength  to  make  a  poem, 
even  if  he  ever  had  ;  but  he  did  make  one,  and  the  way  he  luxu- 
riated in  the  images  of  Nature  was  wonderful  : — what  he  undertook 
to  describe  was  far  away  and  transcendental,  not  physical  ;  but  un- 
consciously his  vocabulary  was  concrete,  naturalistic-  and  imagina- 
tive to  a  high  degree.  Judah,  thou  art  a  lion's  whelp,  said  the 
prophetic  old  man  ;  Issachar,  thou  art  a  strong  ass,  crouching  down 
between  two  burdens — Dan,  thou  art  a  serpent  in  the  way.  an  adder 
in  the  path,  that  biteth  the  horse's  heels,  so  that  his  rider  shall  fall 
backward — Naphtali,  thou  art  a  hind  let  loose — benjamin,  thou  art 
a  ravening  wolf — Joseph,  thou  art  a  fruitful  bough,  even  a  fruitful 
bough  by  a  well,  whose  branches  run  over  a  wall.  But  it  was  that 
predestinated  and  preeminent  Son,  Judah.  upon  whom  he  most  laid 
out  the  strength  of  his  seership,  and  most  affluently  covered  with 
his  imager}-,  l'erhaps  we  cannot  minutely  interpret  all  his  words, 
but  listen  to  the  sound  of  them  ;  Judah  is  a  lion's  whelp  ;  from  the 
prey,  my  son,  thou  art  gone  up.  lie  stooped  down,  he  couched  as 
a  lion  and  as  an  old  lion;  who  shall  rouse  him  up?  The  sceptre 
shall  not  depart  from  Judah.  nor  a  lawgiver  from  between  his  t'eel  until 
Shiloh  come,  and  unto  him  shall  the  gathering  o(  the  people  be. 
Binding  his  foal  unto  the  vine,  and  his  ass's  colt  unto  the  choice  vine, 


256  YALE   LECTURES. 

he  washed  his  garments  in  wine,  and  his  clothes  in  the  blood  of  grapes  : 
his  eyes  shall  be  red  with  wine,  and  his  teeth  white  with  milk.  What 
a  luxuriant  effusion  !  How  instinctively  when  God's  Spirit  was  flood- 
ing him  he  ran  forth  into  God's  world,  its  exuberance,  its  freshness, 
its  exhaustless  multiformity,  its  pure  beauty,  for  his  materials  of 
expression. 

And  coming  down  to  the  New  Testament  it  must  suffice  to  say 
that  our  Lord  himself  evidently  had  a  deep  satisfaction  in  the  fasci- 
nations of  Nature,  and  did  not  hold  himself  back  therefrom.  I 
plainly  hear  the  beating  of  his  heart  towards  all  beauty,  in  such  a 
passage  as  :  "  Consider  the  lilies  how  they  grow  ;  they  toil  not, 
neither  do  they  spin ;  and  yet,  I  say  unto  you,  that  even  Solomon 
in  all  his  glory,  was  not  arrayed  like  one  of  these."  No  man  could 
make  that  comparison  between  Solomon  and  the  lilies,  and  so  praise 
their  array,  whose  eye  and  feeling  were  not  at  the  moment  saturated 
with  their  beauty.  I  have  heard  that  sentence — '  Consider  the  lilies,' 
sung  so  often  and  with  such  impressive  sweetness,  that  I  cannot  dis- 
sociate it  from  the  music  ;  and  am  liable  therefore  to  find  in  it  heart- 
warmths  and  many  things  that  are  of  the  music  rather  than  of  it — 
the  influences  of  such  associations  being  very  insinuating  and  subtle  ; 
— but  I  chose  rather  to  think  that  music  has  done  in  this  case  what 
it  is  able  to  do,  and  was  designed  to  do,  in  all  cases  where  it  carries, 
explains  upon  and  unfolds  divine  themes  ;  namely,  it  has  but  taken 
me  into  the  otherwise  undiscoverable  profundities  of  the  words  of 
Jesus ;  it  has  given  me  to  hear  the  flow  of  their  inner  melody,  it 
has  told  me  how  he  felt  when  he  spoke  as  he  did. 

My  exegetical  commentator  on  the  passage,  informs  me  that 
the  language  indicates  that  Jesus,  when  he  said  lilies,  did  not  mean 
lilies  in  mass,  or  the  genus  lily,  but  that  he  fixed  his  attention  on  the 
individual  lily.  Well,  I  knew  he  did  without  being  told.  My  music 
which  I  have  heard  seemed  to  tell  me  as  much  as  that.  A  general- 
ized love  is  a  good  thing,  but  a  love  that  individualizes  is  much  more 
fervid  and  touching.  When  the  word,  Consider  the  lilies,  springs 
from  a  specific  observation  of  lilies  at  the  moment  and  a  brooding 
on  them  one  by  one,  it  needs  music  for  the  rendering  of  its  whole 
precious  sense. 

But  I  return  to  my  question,  if  beauty  has  no  great  and  useful 
function,  why  did  God,  when  he  inspired  men  to  write,  set  them 
revelling  in  it  as  he  did  ? 

Fourthly,  still  speaking  of  things  that  I  find  in  the  Bible,  please 


YALE   LECTURES.  257 

tell  me  why  God  commanded  that  the  place  where  he  was  to  be  wor- 
shiped by  his  people  Israel  should  be  such  a  very  fine  place? 
There  was  goodly  architecture,  as  good  and  costly  as  could  be  at 
the  time.  There  was  great  carefulness  of  ornament — carefulness 
and  cost.  The  whole  matter  was  specifically  laid  down  and  en- 
joined ;  a  hanging,  a  touch  of  color,  a  socket,  a  nothing-at-all  (as 
we  should  say),  as  precisely  and  imperatively  laid  down  as  the 
Mercy  Seat  and  the  Cherubim  in  the  Holy  of  Holies.  And  then, 
inside  of  all  this  glory,  a  ritual  was  forever  to  move  on  full  of  cir- 
cumstance and  decorum,  more  circumstance  and  carefulness,  three 
times,  than  was  necessary  to  any  ends  of  use.  It  is  thought  by  many 
in  these  days  that  beauty  is  too  much  of  a  beguilement  to  be  let 
into  God's  house  and  service.  It  tends  to  materialize  the  mind.  It 
leads  off  into  sensuousness.  It  fixes  our  attention  on  things  that 
can  never  save  the  soul.  God's  service  has  come  to  be  a  spectacle 
— a  physical  spectacle — in  the  Roman  Church.  And  how  can  that 
be  avoided,  if  you  multiply  physicals,  and  set  people  rejoicing  in 
their  eyes  and  their  ears.  Well,  what  people  were  ever  more  facile 
in  getting  themselves  out  of  spirituality  into  sense,  and  even  into  the 
bottomless  ditch  of  carnalism,  than  the  Jews,  unto  whom  God 
appointed  architecture,  ceremony,  beauty,  pomp,  spectaculars  and 
so  on?  Why  was  he  not  more  cautious?  If  esthetics  are  a 
spurious  element  in  religion,  essentially  and  eternally ;  or  if  while 
not  necessarily  spurious,  the  bearing  of  them  is  bad  practically  and 
on  the  whole,  human  nature  being  so  perverse  that  it  can  turn  a 
good  thing  into  a  curse,  any  time, — how  could  God  institute  that  for 
his  Jews,  that  external  religious  system  to  which  I  have  adverted  ?  I 
am  glad  that  he  has  given  us  such  a  full  account  of  it  as  he  has,  so 
that  we  may  know  for  certain  and  forever,  how  far  art,  beauty,  orna- 
mentation, cost,  sumptuousness,  gorgeousness,  sublimity  and  the 
rest,  may  reasonably  go,  in  helping  religion.  Of  course  all  the  arts 
when  they  start  out  to  benefit  religion,  in  any  given  time,  place 
nation  or  Christian  body,  must  be  wise  as  serpents  in  adjusting 
themselves  to  said  time,  place  and  people.  We  Congregationalists 
do  not  want  any  Holy  of  Holies,  nor  any  High  Priest,  nor  sprink- 
lings, nor  incensings,  nor  arks ;  but  we  may  well  have  as  much  as 
these  in  other  forms  suited  to  our  rather  austere  and  perhaps  grim 
peculiarities.  Speaking  of  grimness,  I  can  recollect  the  time  when 
to  me,  the  young  son  of  a  Methodist  minister,  the  Congregationalists 
were  the  grimmest  thing  I  had  yet  ever  heard  of.     We  did  not  call 


258  YALE   LECTURES. 

them  Congregationalists,  my  Father  and  I,  no,  we  called  them  Cal- 
vinists  ;  a  word  of  terror  much  more  than  the  other — as  indeed  it  is 
to  this  day.  Well,  when  Beauty  undertakes  to  prepare  something 
fitted  to  Calvinists,  she  must  look  out  for  herself  and  not  be  too 
ornate.  The  glory  of  Solomon  and  his  temple  are  too  much  of  an 
array  for  them.  Calvin  himself  would  endure  a  more  elaborated 
externalism  than  these  his  children.  The  building  where  he  preached 
so  long  in  Geneva,  was  and  is  quite  a  building.  And  the  liturgy 
that  he  used  was  quite  a  formal  instrument  of  worship.  Either  one 
of  them  would  almost  shock  a  Calvinistic  congregation  back  in  one 
of  our  steadfast  hill  towns,  with  their  weekly  Lord's  day  extempori- 
zations and  their  right-angled  edifice  with  its  undimmed  white  light, 
its  white  paint,  its  green  blinds  and  its  dear  Puritan  memories. 

I  know  the  stock  argument  against  all  this  that  I  have  been 
saying,  in  regard  to  the  decorous  and  decorative  aspects  of  the 
Israelitish  system  : — it  is  said  that  a  new  era  came  in  when  Jesus 
came,  he  being  opposed  to  those  foregoing  indulgences  in  the 
sensuous,  and  desirous  that  the  interior  and  the  spiritual  should  now 
come  to  the  front  and  have  its  day.  No  doubt  there  is  a  grain  of 
truth  in  that  view.  And  that  grain  of  truth  is  exactly  this,  that 
while  under  the  old  order,  all  such  things  as  institutions,  ceremonies, 
seemlinesses  and  beautifications,  were  secured  by  objective  com- 
mand ;  under  the  blessed  order  of  this  Messianic  period,  objective 
command  has  gone  into  comparative  disuse,  and  in  lieu  thereof  we 
have  what  the  elder  world  never  had,  the  indwelling  Holy  Ghost, 
the  first  gift  of  the  ascended  Lord,  to  set  all  things  in  order  in  the 
Church  ;  all  things  I  say  ;  doctrines,  polities,  rituals,  clerical  orders, 
religious  art,  everything  you  can  think  of — which  subjective  method 
is  inferior  to  the  old  one,  as  letting  in  a  more  or  less  occasional 
fallibility,  the  old  one  being  precisionism  made  perfect.  For  ex- 
ample, there  was  absolutely  no  chance  for  the  builders  of  the  taber- 
nacle or  the  architects  of  the  temple,  to  mistake  God's  desire 
touching  the  structure  thereof  at  any  least  point,  or  as  to  any  least 
touch  of  adornment ;  nevertheless,  the  new  method,  the  method  of 
the  Holy  Ghost,  operating  in  souls  and  in  the  Church  to  get  things 
done,  is,  beyond  all  expression,  an  advance  on  the  old  one  as 
respects  the  supreme  things  to  be  secured — as  much  in  advance, 
for  aught  I  know,  as  the  anti-typal  Lamb  of  Calvary  was  an  advance 
on  all  preceding  sacrifices.  My  Brethren,  there  was  never  a  great 
teacher  or   founder  on  earth  who  was  less  an  institutionalist,  in  the 


YALE   LECTURES.  259 

sense  of  personally  instituting  things,  reforms,  systems  and  all  sorts 
of  exterior  elaborations,  than  Jesus ;  but  there  was  never  on  earth 
an  institutionalist  so  prolific  as  he,  in  the  sense  that  from  him  and 
his  resurrection  life,  carried  into  individual  souls  through  the  Holy 
Ghost,  institutions  were  to  come — institutions,  rituals,  arts,  litera- 
tures, laws,  philosophies — a  prodigal  outflowering,  wide  as  the 
world  and  as  perennial  as  the  tree  of  life  by  the  "pure  river  of  water 
of  life,  clear  as  crystal,  proceeding  out  of  the  throne  of  God  and  of 
the  Lamb."  Ah  yes  !  he  is  the  tree  of  life.  All  earth-born  growths 
must  wither.  Only  the  fruitages  of  the  Holy  Ghost  abide.  Even 
the  arts,  that  have  no  supernatural  root,  are  perishable,  or  wherein- 
soever they  survive  they  serve  a  distinctly  second-rate  use.  And  if 
you  ask  me  what  I  have  to  say  in  respect  to  the  perpetuity  and  the 
eternal  monarchy  of  Greek  art,  this  is  my  answer ;  that  in  so  far  as 
Greek  art,  at  any  period,  or  in  any  instance,  was  the  product  of  relig- 
ion, it  had  in  it  that  condition  of  longevity  on  which  I  insist ;  and 
in  so  far  as  it  was  not,  but  was  moved  by  a  finite  impulse,  and  con- 
fined itself  to  a  finite  range,  while  it  is  the  best  thing  of  the  kind  the 
world  ever  saw,  I  suppose,  yet  the  kind  is  secondary,  and  it  were 
possible  to  show  that,  adding  together  all  the  elements  of  transcend- 
ent art,  such  as  technical  ability,  formulative  power,  noble  aims, 
profound  feeling  and  wealth  of  ideas,  Christian  Art  is  immensely 
the  queen  over  classical ;  and  whatever  may  be  the  value  of  classical 
models  (and  certainly  it  is  very  great) ,  if  Christian  Art  does  not  take 
the  lead  by  far,  as  a  factor  in  modern  civilization,  the  reason  will 
be,  that  too  many  Puritan  folk  contrive  to  get  themselves  born — 
persons,  that  is,  that  do  not  see  all  sides  of  the  salvation  which  is 
provided  for  modern  life. 

I  was  speaking  of  the  era  of  the  Holy  Ghost ;  of  its  fallibility 
as  compared  with  the  old  era  and  of  its  superiority,  nevertheless. 
It  would  take  me  too  far  out  of  my  way  to  expand  that  matter,  and 
forestall  all  possible  misapprehension  of  what  I  have  said.  I  do  not 
deny  that  the  great  Teacher  laid  down  some  objective  standards. 
Certainly  he  did.  Still,  it  is  true,  as  a  general  remark,  that  the  work 
of  formulation,  doctrinal,  institutional,  ritual,  ecclesiastical,  esthetic 
and  all  the  rest,  was  left  to  men  in  whom  the  Holy  Ghost  should  be. 
when  the  Holy  Ghost  had  finally  come  in  that  phenomenal  coming, 
which  made  all  prior  comings  so  inconclusive  and  incomplete  that 
Jesus  could  freely  speak  of  them  as  no  comings  at  all. 

I  come  now  to  my  fifth  head  of  argument  against  what,  for  the 


260  YALE   LECTURES. 

sake  of  convenience,  I  have  called  the  Puritan  urgency  for  the  di- 
vorce of  beauty  and  religion.  I  hope  I  shall  not  use  that  word 
Puritan  so  often  as  to  create  an  impression  that  I  have  an  uncon- 
genial and  unbrotherly  feeling  towards  the  people  referred  to — for 
I  have  not.  For  rhetorical  purposes,  I  want  to  use  them.  And 
they  are  such  a  stalwart  folk  that  they  can  bear  a  good  deal  of  using 
— and  even  unjust  use.     They  are  inured  to  it,  for  generations. 

But  fifthly,  I  say  : — that  idea  mentioned  some  time  since,  that 
over  and  over  again,  in  the  history  of  the  world,  the  highest  develop- 
ment of  the  Beautiful  has  coexisted  with  a  low  state  of  religion,  and 
that  therefore,  the  Beautiful,  speaking  by  and  large,  is  not  only  not 
nourishing  to  religion,  but  probably  withering,  I  would  like  to  make 
head  against  still  further,  by  several  running  remarks,  thus  :  if  secular 
education  tends  to  keep  men  out  of  the  criminal  class,  as  the  statis- 
tics of  that  class  do  prove  that  it  does,  and  as  we  should  natur- 
ally expect  it  would  ;  is  it  not  likely  that  the  influence  of  beauty,  con- 
sidered merely  as  a  secular  force  now,  would  also  have  a  good  moral 
bearing  ?  And  again,  how  often  do  we  see  persons  of  the  highest  es- 
thetic development,  who  at  the  same  time  are  sound,  strong,  inflexi- 
ble and  sweet  religiously  !  I  have  in  mind  now  a  man  whose  piety  is 
a  most  admirable  compound  of  staunchness  and  tenderness,  a  man 
who  would  rise  to  martyrdom  on  a  fair  call  with  absolute  spon- 
taneity,— all  the  moral  grit  of  his  New  England  progenitors  is  in  him 
undiminished — so  much  so  as  to  be  a  matter  of  remark — and  yet  it 
is  almost  an  amusement  to  notice  how  intoxicated  that  heart  is  in 
the  presence  of  the  goodly  scenes  of  Nature,  how  sometimes  his 
soul  within  him  will  almost  liquefy  before  a  choice  painting,  and  how 
a  use  of  language,  in  a  public  speaker,  for  instance,  that  is  terse,  pat, 
vital,  full  of  noble  intention,  and  in  supreme  art,  will  give  him  so 
much  pleasure  that  he  can  hardly  utter  his  feeling.  These  instances 
are  common  enough  on  earth,  my  Brethren.  And  in  every  great 
public  emergency  that  comes  up,  like  war  after  a  long  period  of 
peace,  culture  and  easy  living,  during  which  a  great  many  men  and 
women  have  given  a  good  deal  of  attention  and  interest  to  the  em- 
bellishments of  life,  or  life  in  its  esthetic  aspects,  and  have  come  to 
be  considered  dilettante,  unrobust,  lisping,  people  of  the  rosebud  and 
perfumery  order — so  considered  by  the  uncultivated  multitude — be- 
hold, these  supposed  man-milliners  and  fashion-plates,  these  enervate 
creatures,  these  New  York  Seventh  Regiment  ornamental  men,  go 
down  to  the  field  of  death  as  gallantly  and  cheerily,  and  with  as  iron 


YALE   LECTURES.  261 

a  manhood  as  though  they  had  never  once  seen  a  picture  or  a  party, 
or  a  fashionable  coat  with  a  rosebud  in  the  buttonhole  thereof — side 
by  side  they  go  with  the  men  of  the  shop,  factory  and  farm,  these 
sons  of  culture,  these  emasculates,  facing  all  things  of  peril  and  en- 
durance. How  very  often  that  is  so.  Often  enough,  at  any  rate,  to 
show  that  the  influence  of  high  civilization  is  not  necessarily  de- 
grading and  enfeebling. 

Consider,  once  more,  that  aside  from  material  beauty,  we  have 
no  images  wherewith  to  represent  the  beauty  immaterial,  the  beauty 
of  a  thought,  the  beauty  of  an  intellectual  structure  (as  an  essay  or  a 
discourse  or  a  poem) ,  the  beauty  of  innumerable  beautiful  feelings  and 
the  beauty  of  holiness.  It  cannot  be  that  material  beauty  is  debauch- 
ing, or  that  it  is  so  far  dangerous  that  we  had  better  keep  away  from 
it,  when  all  these  beautiful ,  holy  and  precious  interior  things —  (the 
things  of  the  soul  for  whose  preservation  beauty  external  must  be 
shunned,  it  is  thought) — cannot  be  at  all  formulated  and  put  into  cir- 
culation, except  in  the  use  of  the  material,  the  physical,  the  sensuous. 
The  deep  subject  of  language  I  cannot  enter ;  especially  as  I  did  try 
to  enter  it  when  I  spoke  to  you  last  year  and  had  some  points  to  carry ; 
but  how  far  does  one  need  to  enter  it  to  discover  the  divine  use  of 
beauty  as  a  vocabulary  for  the  soul  ?  When  I  look  at  the  eternal 
whiteness  of  a  far-away  Alpine  summit,  I  call  it  holy  and  awful  in  its 
holiness  ;  but  that  only  means  that  yonder  immaculate  mountain-head 
is  an  image  ;  a  suitable  and  therefore  ordained  image  of  a  certain  su- 
preme moral  quality  in  God,  angels  and  men.  Some  Sybarite,  be- 
holding that  Alp,  may  not  be  moralized  by  it ;  it  is  even  conceivable 
that  he  may  simply  turn  it  in  among  his  luxuries  and  there  stop  ;  just 
as  many  a  Church  goer  makes  the  means  of  God's  grace  to  be  a  savor 
of  death  to  his  miserable  soul ;  but  that  is  not  the  fault  of  the  Alp. 
The  Alp  is  all  right.  That  snow  is  holy.  So  holy  that  many  of  us 
are  nearly  heart-broken  while  we  stand  down  in  the  valley  and  look 
up  at  it.  Down  in  the  valley  !  Sure  enough,  there  we  are.  In  the 
valley  of  unholiness ;  cleansed  by  the  washing  of  regeneration,  per- 
chance, but  not  stainless — and  yet  not  hopeless  quite,  because  from 
skyey  heights  out  infinitely  beyond  the  utmost  Alp,  there  comes  to 
us  a  word  of  hope,  saying,  "  Though  your  sins  be  as  scarlet,  they 
shall  be  as  white  as  snow,  though  they  be  red  like  crimson,  they  shall 
be  as  wool."  Isaiah  understood  imagery,  and  he  knew  that  white 
is  one  of  God's  chosen  soul-terms — a  touch  of  the  sensible  whereon 
there  plays  forever  a  touch,  a  glory  of  the  supersensible. 


262  YALE   LECTURES. 

And  so  I  might  move  through  the  entire  creation  and  find 
everywhere  the  moral  and  spiritual.  The  creation  and  we  stand 
over  against  each  other  in  an  appointed,  detailed,  wonderful  corre- 
spondence. It  was  my  privilege  last  year,  in  my  lecture  on  the 
Vague  Elements  in  Language,  to  show  how  even  the  infinite  may  be 
effectively  set  forth  in  finite  contrivances  of  expression.  And  I 
doubt  whether  any  impression  of  the  infinite  ever  received  by  man 
is  wholly  void  of  a  moral  element.  The  infinite,  at  any  rate,  is 
serious,  grave  by  its  very  size  ;  and  when  you  get  as  far  as  serious- 
ness, you  cannot  be  far  from  the  border-lines  of  the  moral.  Now 
the  sweep  of  curved  lines  is  one  of  the  ways  of  indicating  the  infinite 
— not  the  sweep  of  circles,  because  they  are  too  full  of  the  intima- 
tion that  they  get  around  and  come  full  circle  by  and  by ;  the  moment 
a  curve  completes  its  curve  and  joins,  it  becomes  a  finite  image  ;  but 
these  curves  that  curve  slowly  and  take  forever  to  get  around,  are, 
to  our  feeling,  as  though  they  never  did  get  around.  For  a  thing 
that  moves  on  and  moves  on  and  never  stops  moving,  that  shadows 
forth  the  infinite  for  us ;  and  all  my  experience  is  that  when  I  get 
upon  such  a  journey  as  that,  I  feel  pretty  solemn,  and  as  though  I 
wanted  no  reprehensible  thought  or  emotion  to  come  into  me. 

A  similar  moral  or  semi-moral  effect  can  be  wrought  upon  us 
by  the  skilful  use  of  colors  ;  and  it  is  the  very  divinity  of  pictorial 
art  that  it  can  do  such  things.  Many  landscape  painters  understand 
all  about  this.  And  a  painter  does  not  amount  to  much  unless  he 
does.  He  who  paints  a  bare  boulder  even  in  simple  definiteness — 
that  is,  in  an  exact,  cold  reproduction  of  its  finiteness,  has  abused 
the  boulder.  What  did  that  boulder  ever  do  that  entitles  it  to  such 
treatment !  Nobody  ought  to  be  painted  in  his  utmost  literalness. 
That  is  knowing  him  after  the  flesh,  as  St.  Paul  expressed  it.  A 
human  face  should  be  painted  suggestively.  A  face  at  any  given  in- 
stant, at  the  instant,  say,  when  the  artist  is  looking  at  it  in  order  to 
paint  it,  has  a  certain  kind  and  amount  of  expression,  but  that  man 
there  sitting  to  be  looked  at  and  painted,  has  in  him  quantities  ot 
kinds  and  amounts  of  things,  not  present  in  that  one  moment,  or 
one  hour,  of  that  face.  Therefore  it  is  an  exceedingly  fragmentary 
and  insulting  performance  to  paint  him  as  he  then  is,  and  have  that 
pass  down  to  all  generations,  as  the  man.  It  is  not  the  man.  It 
requires  a  very  roundabout  exploration  to  know  a  man.  Moreover, 
when  you  do  know  him,  in  his  actualities,  you  have  no  right  to  paint 
him  so.     If  we  all  had  in  us  nothing  but  our  actualities,  we  should 


YALE    LECTURES.  263 

be  small  affairs  ;  and  hardly  worth  painting.  Our  potentialities  are 
the  greatest  thing  about  us.  That  is  so  even  with  heathen  men. 
But  since  Jesus  has  come  and  redeemed  men,  their  potentialities 
have  been  greatly  enlarged  and  manifolded ;  and  they  must  be 
painted  accordingly.  Paint  a  man  at  his  best ;  not  only  as  what  he 
has  made  himself  to  be  so  far,  but  paint  him  according  to  what  he  is 
germinally,  and  what  he  may  be  when  those  precious  germinals  have 
received  the  whole  stimulation  of  the  grace  of  God.  In  other  words, 
idealize  him.  Or,  in  still  other  words,  make  a  little  show  of  the  in- 
finite in  him,  here  and  there.  Those  who  love  the  man  will  applaud 
your  fine  veracity  in  the  matter,  your  ideal  veracity,  if  nobody  else 
does. 

So  the  boulder,  so  anything.  Treat  all  suggestively.  Spread  a 
little  warmth  over  your  rock.  Mellow  it.  Put  a  heart  into  it.  Foi 
it  is  a  curious  and  beautiful  fact,  that  every  visible  thing  has  a  heart, 
when  closely  studied  ;  like  Alfred  Tennyson's  tree  that  the  maiden 
kissed  and  kissed  and  then  kissed  again,  because  she  found  a  dear 
name  cut  on  it ;  until  the  tree  could  stand  it  no  longer  but  spoke  up 
and  said  : 

Her  kisses  were  so  close  and  kind, 

That,  trust  me  on  my  word, 
Hard  wood  I  am,  and  wrinkled  rind, 

But  yet  my  sap  was  stirred ; 

And  even  into  my  inmost  ring 

A  pleasure  I  discerned, 
Like  those  blind  motions  of  the  spring, 

That  s,how  the  year  is  turned. 

Tennyson  can  hardly  be  charged  with  exaggeration  here.  Every 
thing  has  a  heart.  And  there  is  nothing  more  admirable  and  whole- 
some in  fine  art,  from  the  beginning,  than  modern  landscape  work, 
for  the  one  reason  that  it  has  passed  clear  beyond  the  bewitching 
finitude  of  Greek  achievement,  into  the  deeper  and  more  solemn 
witchery  of  a  statement  from  the  interior ;  which  statement  of  Nature 
from  the  interior  is  large,  vague,  vast  and  practically  infinite,  because 
it  is  from  the  interior ;  or,  in  other  words,  because  it  takes  Nature 
in  its  expression  as  having  meanings,  meanings  intellectual,  mean 
ings  moral,  meanings  spiritual,  meanings  affectional. 

I  was  saying  that  as  lines  have  power  to  suggest  the  infinite,  so 
have  colors.  And  how  do  they  do  it?  In  various  ways.  Please 
remember,  I  am  trying  to  illustrate  the  thought  that  material  beauty 


264  YALE   LECTURES. 

cannot  be,  to  be  shunned,  as  some  claim,  because  beauty  supersen- 
sible, the  different  forms  of  soul-beauty,  are  not  to  be  set  forth  other- 
wise than  in  terms  of  material  beauty,  or  the  beauty  of  the  world  ; 
and  I  have  drifted  into  a  cognate  thought,  by  way  of  illustration,  the 
thought  that  material  things  can  represent  to  us  and  make  us  feel 
the  infinite.  Lines  can  do  this  and  so  can  colors.  When  a  painter 
starts  you  down  a  vista  that  has  no  end,  he  has  started  in  you  the 
vagueness  of  the  infinite.  When  a  painter  has  hinted,  but  not  painted, 
the  depths  of  the  ocean,  he  has  done  the  same  thing.  When  a 
painter,  along  his  far  away  sky-line,  has  drawn  a  color-tone  which 
says  that  beyond  the  horizon  there,  out  of  sight,  sweeps  a  boundless 
stretch  of  sea,  he  has  given  into  your  soul  the  whole  immeasurable 
suggestiveness  of  sea.  Not  even  when  you  stand  on  the  sea-shore, 
and  look  off,  are  you  so  immersed  in  the  infinite,  as  when  you  mark 
that  painter's  line  of  color.  On  the  shore,  outlooking,  your  eye 
reaches  an  horizon.  To  be  sure,  you  do  not  stop  there,  still  that 
horizon  jars  you  and  mars  the  full  impression  of  infinity  upon  you 
from  the  endless  waters.  But  in  the  picture,  you  see  neither  sea 
nor  horizon,  but  the  sea  is  suggested  without  a  thought  of  horizon. 
Everything  is  left  without  boundaries.  You  have  a  statement  whose 
main  value  is  in  what  it  does  not  state.  These  are  some  of  the  ways 
of  impression  open  to  the  color-master. 

I  have  heard  the  superiority  of  classical  art  attributed  to  the 
finiteness  of  classical  subjects.  It  is  possible,  it  was  said,  to  formu- 
late perfectly,  as  the  Greeks  did,  ideas  as  limited  as  the  Greek  ideas 
were.  But  since  Christianity  has  come  with  its  glorious  enlarge- 
ments, its  many  ideas  that  shade  off  into  mystery  and  have  their 
principal  effect  as  being  mysterious,  the  old-time,  absolute  Greek 
formulation — that  has  been  the  fascination  of  the  world  ever  since — 
must  be  given  up,  of  course,  and  art,  as  art,  must  take  an  eternal 
inferiority,  it  is  thought.  Why  undertake  to  harness  art  to  religion, 
when  the  chief  contents  of  religion  are  essentially  unstatable  by  art. 

That  difficulty  and  some  others,  I  may  get  at  in  another  lecture. 
Meanwhile,  have  I  not  at  least  nibbled  around  the  edges  of  it,  in 
what  I  have  said?  Modern  art  can  state  the  large  Christian  ideas. 
It  had  better  let  alone  trying  to  state  the  Almighty  in  a  Vatican 
fresco  of  an  old  man.  And  a  few  more  impossibles  it  had  better  let 
alone.  But  nine-tenths  of  all  that  Christianity  has  brought  in,  can 
be  stated  in  a  way  to  make  about  all  the  impression  a  human  soul  can 
bear.     And  even  the  Almighty  can  be  set  forth,  if  we  cease  from  the 


YALE   LECTURES.  265 

folly  of  bodily  parts  and  just  describe  on  the  canvas  the  great  works 
that  so  reveal  him.  I  never  look  at  the  ocean  or  at  a  terrible  storm, 
or  at  the  sky  of  night,  or  at  the  mighty  mountains  of  a  land  like 
Switzerland,  without  an  impression  of  God  that  is  practically 
infinite.  And  in  so  far  as  such  things  can  be  painted,  God  is  made 
known  art-wise.  The  modern  machinery  for  embodying  the  infinite 
is  good. 

I  have  spoken  of  lines  and  colors,  but  I  have  said  nothing  of 
music.  And  music  is  the  one  art  that  is  most  serviceable  for  the 
setting  forth  of  those  Christian  ideas  and  experiences  whose  dimen- 
sions, and  whose  celestial  qualities,  are  supposed  by  some  to  be 
unstatable  essentially  and  forever.  I  say  they  are  not.  I  imagine 
that  music  was  born  for  that  purpose,  principally.  What  did  the 
Greeks  know  about  music,  comparatively?  Nothing.  No,  music 
was  waiting  for  the  Messiah  and  his  kingdom.  Waiting  for  the  Holy 
Ghost  to  get  into  souls,  and  start  there  all  sorts  of  mysterious  com- 
motions ;  penitences,  exultations,  aspirations,  expectations,  sweet 
loves,  a  whole  world  of  life  that  the  ancients  did  not  know.  Music 
waited  for  that ;  and  when  that  came  she  came,  last-born  of  God, 
with  her  hymns,  anthems,  oratorios  and  marvels  many ;  marvels  of 
composition  not  only,  but  marvellous  new  instruments,  and  instru- 
mental combinations  ;  instruments  that  almost  articulate  and  often 
seem  to  know  and  be  glad  for  the  divine  service  they  are  in.  God 
hasten  the  day  when  every  Christian  man  shall  know  music. 


THE  SERVICE  OF  ART  IN 
RELIGION. 

(II.) 


It  is  sometimes  mentioned  as  a  reason  why  art  should  never  be 
invoked  in  aid  of  religion,  that  the  very  act  of  putting  ideas  or  in- 
ward experiences  of  any  sort  into  form,  as  in  art,  is  deteriorating  in 
its  tendency  to  the  man  so  doing  and  to  all  people  who  consent  to 
commune  with  and  enjoy  his  work.  Ideas  or  feelings,  if  let  alone 
and  left  to  be  in  the  mind  simply  ideas  and  feelings,  are  less  danger- 
ous morally  than  they  are  if  externalized,  and  especially  if  external- 
ized in  terms  of  beauty.  Perhaps  if  they  were  externalized  in 
thorough-going  ugliness,  they  would  be  less  to  be  feared,  but  the 
moment  they  are  charming  or  even  pleasant,  the  trouble  begins,  and 
all  concerned  are  demoralized  unless  they  set  a  guard  against  the 
beguiler.  Well,  those  of  us  who  are  conversant  with  Holy  Writ,  do 
not  need  to  be  told  that  the  physical  is  quite  an  inlet  of  evil  for  men  ; 
and  even  those  of  us  who  are  simply  observant  of  what  goes  on  in  our 
own  selves,  have  come  to  know  the  same  thing ;  Holy  Writ  in  this 
case,  as  in  many  others,  being  simply  an  authoritative  statement  of 
what  is  true  and  easily  discoverable,  Bible  or  no  Bible.  But  if  the 
Bible  is  explicit  on  the  dangers  of  the  physical,  the  external,  the 
sensuous,  it  is  equally  explicit  on  the  more  subtle  and  vastly  more 
unrelishable  point  that  evil  has  its  seat  and  all  its  potency  in  the  soul 
of  man,  and  not  in  externals  ;  so  that  ideas  unformulated,  unexternal- 
ized,  unembodied,  are  not  always  such  tremendously  innocent  things 
after  all.     Leave  them  alone  in  the  mind  and  never  speak  them  forth 


YALE  LECTURES.  267 

in  any  form,  and  they  would  fester  there  and  work  corruption  as  ener- 
getically as  you  please.  However,  I  am  not  disposed  to  insist  upon 
that,  to-day.  It  is  so,  but  let  it  go.  I  grant  that  formulation  has  its 
perils.  Formulation  is  the  occasion — the  occasion  if  it  is  not  the 
cause — of  religious  degeneration  in  countless  cases.  It  is  claimed 
that  it  tends  to  degeneration  in  all  cases.  Well,  admit  even  that.  I 
do  not  feel  myself  compelled,  in  order  to  reach  the  ends  I  seek  here, 
to  resist  the  very  radical  statement,  that  always  when  tangible  em- 
bodiment of  soul-facts  is  attempted,  whether  in  art  or  in  anything 
else,  a  distinct  moral  risk  is  incurred  ;  and  that  therefore  all  the  arts 
of  expression  are  to  be  diligently  watched. 

But  now  just  notice  a  few  plain  things.  First,  that  our  Maker 
in  giving  us  bodies,  has  indicated  his  wish  that  we  should  externalize 
and  take  the  risk  of  it.  He  externalized  us ;  then  why  should  we 
not  proceed  to  perpetually  externalize  ourselves  in  all  kinds  of  utter- 
ance, pictures,  sculptures,  music,  rhetoric,  architecture,  gesture, 
oratory  :  and  in  that  ofttimes  most  affirmative  and  impressive  of  all 
utterances  or  self-embodiments,  silence  ;  that  fine-art  which  occasion- 
ally a  silent  man  like  Grant  has  perfected.  A  soul  taken  singly  and 
alone  is  not  a  man.  A  man  is  an  incorporated  soul.  There  is  a 
good  deal  of  talk  abroad  about  "  saving  souls."  Christ  Jesus  did 
not  come  into  the  world  to  save  souls,  but  men.  And  the  gist  of  the 
scriptural  doctrine  of  the  resurrection  is,  that  each  man  of  us  is 
saved  in  his  totality — not  a  ghost  but  a  man  (which  a  ghost  never 
was).  Well  then,  if  a  man  is  not  a  man  except  as  he  is  corpore- 
alized,  neither  is  a  thought  a  thought,  nor  a  feeling  a  feeling,  unless 
it  is  corporealized  or  embodied  or  formulated.  I  will  show  that 
more  minutely  a  little  farther  on.  For  the  present  I  assert  it  and 
say  moreover,  that  whether  that  assertion  be  true  or  not,  it  is  tree 
that  God's  creating  us  soul  and  body,  points  to,  suggests  and  legiti- 
mates the  bodying  forth  of  our  inner  and  spiritual  selves  in  suitable 
forms ;  such  as  our  wit  can  devise  and  such  as  seem  to  effectually 
do  the  business  for  us. 

Further  I  wish  to  ask,  how  are  we  ever  to  have  the  least  human 
intercourse,  if  we  do  not  get  out  into  these  embodiments  whereof  I 
speak ;  into  language,  into  painting,  into  music,  into  abiding  struc- 
tures and  so  on  ?  I  sometimes  notice  that  the  horses  in  the  field 
put  their  noses  together  and  have  a  protracted  season  of  silent  fellow- 
ship. We  have  not  yet  come  to  that  fine  clairvoyance.  Or  rather, 
I  should  say  that  we  are  capable    of  silent  fellowship,  but  have 


268  YALE  LECTURES. 

numerous  things  to  say  for  which  mere  silence  is  not  enough.  When 
a  man's  wife  is  silent  to  him  sometimes,  it  is  a  saying  to  him  as  much 
as  he  can  stand  at  the  time  ;  but  in  the  long  run  of  life  our  minds 
and  our  hearts  get  full  of  things  that  cannot  begin  to  be  expressed 
in  the  simple  alphabet  of  silence.  The  horse  is  not  so.  His 
consciousness  is  pretty  simple  on  the  whole,  I  judge,  and  a  simple 
language  therefore  answers  in  his  case.  Our  consciousness  has  a 
hundred-fold  more  contents  and  more  complexity  and  we  must  have 
a  hundred  devices  of  expression,  some  of  them  very  complex. 
There  is  no  intercourse,  I  say,  if  externalization  ceases. 

But  remember  that  only  a  part  of  our  intercourse  is  with  our 
contemporaries.     I  do  not  know  but  I  have  to  do  with  the  departed 
more  than  I  have  with  the  living.     I  read  their  books.     I  contem- 
plate their  arts.     I  listen  to  their  music.     I  sit  still  and  absorbent 
under  the  venerable  influence  of  their  cathedrals  and  their  memorial 
structures.     I  go  to  their  graves  and  read   the   inscriptions   over 
them.     I  go  up  and  down  the  earth  on  pilgrimages  to  those  cities 
where  the  precious  vestiges  of  them  are  particularly  accumulated. 
But  suppose  these  men  and  all  the  men  of  the  past  had  been  preju- 
diced against  externalization,  had  not  believed  in  memorials  and 
vestiges  and  precious  accumulations,  but  had  consulted  the  horse — 
as  Solomon  said,  Go  to  the  ant — and  had  refused  everything  save 
the  mutual  touch  of  noses,  so  to  speak.     That  would  have  answered 
a  certain  purpose  for  them,  but  not  much  of  a  purpose  for  us  who 
o  recall  them  and  realize  them  and  get  some  profit  from  their 
1  ce.     If  each  generation  refuses  to  express  itself,  then  every 
'  *i  must  make  the  experience  of  life  entirely  uninstructed 
experiments.     What  an  unaccumulative  and  unprogressive 

'       'nan  race  would  then  be,  like  to  the  very  animals  of  the 
not  need  to  b. 

and  even  those .  ...       ,-,  .1    .  •  , 

.      ng  a  little  while  ago,  that  as  a  man  is  not  a  man  unless 
own  selves,  havt     , 

i  thought  is  not  a  thought  unless  embodied.     And 
case,  as  in  many 

what  is  true  and  \  .  .     .         .         .    ,     .  ... 

...       d  question  whether  the  mind  of  man  can  think 
Bible  is  explicit  on  ?  ,   .  ,  .  _ 

.forms  of  the  outward — sense-forms — I  am  not 
sensuous,  it  is  equah,  ,     ,         .  .    ,     , 

..  ,   '  ,         .       ,    nit  on  the   question   whether   the    mind    does 
unrehshable  point  that .   ..      ,  .  .    .  .  ,       . 

,         .  ally  draw  on  the  external  for  its  moulds  01 

of  man,  and  not  in  externa      .      ,  L     .     .  , ,    x 

,     ,.    .  ^eak  who  ever  took  the  trouble  to  examine 

lzed,  unembodied,  are  not  ai  „.     .  .  ,    .  ,  .. 

„    '     ,  ,        :ter.     We  think  in  words,  generally  we 

after  all.     Leave  them  alone  11 „T  ,    4 

mstinctive  with  us.     We  were  made  to. 


YALE  LECTURES.  269 

If  all  men  breathe,  they  were  made  to  breathe.  And  if  they  all  think 
embodied  thoughts  God  meant  they  should.  But  if  my  unexpressed 
thoughts  are  thus  formulated  in  fact  within  me,  and  proceed  in 
terms  of  structural  coherency  and  logic,  and  in  terms  of  beauty 
often ;  behold  I  am  already  in  the  perilous  trap  of  a  practical 
externalization — interior  and  mental  externalization.  Perhaps  I  am 
not  much  degenerated  by  it ;  nevertheless  there  is  a  sense-process 
going  on  in  me.  I  am  in  commerce  with  externals  in  the  privacy 
of  my  mind.  The  matrix  of  my  thought  savors  of  the  physical.  I 
may  comfort  myself  with  the  notion  that  I  am  particularly  unphysical, 
because  I  have  not  put  my  thought  into  any  form  that  can  be  touched 
with  the  hands ;  but  I  am  deluded.  Jesus  went  to  the  root  of  this 
matter  when  he  taught  that  a  man  need  not  advance  so  far  as  an 
overt  act  in  order  to  be  corrupted,  but  that  the  instant  a  reprehen- 
sible thought  emerges  into  his  consciousness,  the  whole  strength  of 
corruption  is  in  him. 

I  say  again  :  the  instant  I  think  a  thought,  the  jeopardy  of 
physicalization  has  begun,  because  that  thought,  following  the  cus- 
tomary process  of  human  thought,  clothes  itself  in  a  body  borrowed 
from  the  outward.  Metaphysicians  sometimes  fancy  when  they  use 
language  for  the  sharp  purposes  of  their  particular  business,  that 
they  have  triumphantly  purged  their  terms  of  the  colors  and  flavors 
of  the  outward  world.  They  have  eliminated  the  physical,  or  at  any 
rate,  whatever  physical  there  may  be  left  in  their  words  they  do  not 
use  in  their  processes  of  thought.  But  language  is  loth  to  be  expur- 
gated in  that  way.  It  was  sense-born.  It  was  physical  in  its  origin. 
And  it  knows  it  and  is  not  ashamed.  So  it  holds  on  to  its  physical 
parentage.  It  holds  on  ;  there  is  an  indestructible  physical  image 
in  each  word  of  it.  The  metaphysician  may  try  not  to  have  any- 
thing to  do  with  that  image,  but  the  image  is  the  vital  essence  of 
the  word  and  when  he  is  dead  and  gone  and  another  generation 
come  to  read  what  he  has  left,  often  they  hunt  out  his  suppressed 
images,  in  order  to  get  down  into  his  real  meaning ;  the  fact  being, 
after  all,  that  those  images,  those  physical  elements,  did  always 
secretly  determine  even  that  metaphysician's  use  of  language.  There 
is  a  curious  pertinacity  here  :  a  persistence  as  of  a  thing  alive  and 
wilful. 

I  said  at  the  beginning  that  I  was  willing  for  the  sake  of  argu- 
ment to  admit  that  there  is  in  all  cases  a  tendency  towards  an  evil 
influence  on  men  in  all  the  arts  of  expression. 


270  YALE  LECTURES. 

The  moment  a  mind  moves  forth  into  embodiment,  artistic  or 
otherwise,  it  perils  itself  and  everybody  else.  Let  that  be  conceded, 
whether  we  need  to  concede  it  or  not.  And  now  it  becomes  very 
important  to  know  what  are  our  securities  against  that  miserable 
tendency  and  especially  in  fine  art ;  what  is  our  security?  Are  there 
any  securities  that  are  so  secure  as  to  make  it  worth  while  trying  to 
wed  art  to  religion  ever?     I  propose  to  answer  that  question. 

And  first  we  must  not  undertake  to  get  security  by  minimizing 
form,  as  the  Congregationalists  incline  to  do  sometimes  and  other 
bodies  much  more.  Form  we  must  have  on  all  accounts,  and  if  we 
are  to  secure  the  ends  of  self-expression  fully  and  the  ends  of  impres- 
sion fully,  we  must  have  of  form  not  a  little.  The  fact  is,  in  several 
denominations  those  ends  are  not  secured  with  any  fulness.  One 
might  make  a  good  lecture  on  the  exact  points  of  short-coming 
among  the  Quakers,  for  example,  in  that  regard.  There  can  be  no 
complete  and  symmetrical  doctrinal  development,  except  by  a  com- 
plete and  symmetrical  development  of  form.  Neither  can  there  be 
any  well-balanced  and  full-toned  development  of  the  religious  life. 
Indeed  there  would  not  be  such  things  as  denominations,  with  their 
contrary  polities  and  their  contrary  theologies,  were  it  not  for  the 
inadequate  and  fragmentary  rituals  and  form-systems  of  the  Christian 
bodies.  There  would  only  be  the  Church  Catholic,  as  there  ought 
to  be.  I  do  not  say  that  all  men  would  think  alike  as  to  doctrine 
and  polity,  if  they  were  all  put  into  the  discipline  of  the  same  forms  ; 
absolute  uniformity  of  opinion  could  never  be  ;  but  they  would  think 
alike  so  far,  and  particularly  would  be  developed  along  the  same  lines 
and  into  the  same  types  of  religious  experience  so  nearly,  that  they 
would  have  no  heart  for  denominational  subdivisions.  I  say  sub- 
divisions to  indicate  my  sense  of  the  disgraceful  multiplicity  of  the 
separated  folds.  I  have  heard  many  fine  arguments  to  show  the 
great  value  of  denominations  ;  but  in  my  judgment,  all  real  values 
could  be  better  secured  in  a  Catholic,  or  universal  Church.  I  did 
not  know  that  once,  but  I  have  known  it  for  some  years  now.  We 
must  not  undertake  to  defend  ourselves  from  the  possible  debase- 
ment incident  to  Form  by  any  extreme  abridgement  of  Form. 

Secondly,  confining  myself  now  to  the  arts  that  carry  in  them 
influences  of  beauty,  I  remark  :  beauty  is  safe  enough  always/and  no 
one  is  morally  relaxed  by  it  when  neither  the  artist  nor  the  observer 
makes  it  an  end  in  itself,  but  on  the  contrary,  seeks  ends  intel- 
lectual, ethical  and  religious,  and  holds  beauty  strictly  subordinate 


YALE  LECTURES.  271 

and  contributory  thereto.  I  have  struck  now  a  fundamental 
chord  in  this  whole  matter.  In  any  just  and  wholesome  arrange- 
ment of  the  arts  of  expression,  beauty  is  a  subordinate  element. 
And  how  do  we  know  that?  By  what  considerations  do  we  show 
that  beauty  belongs  down  there  under  those  other  things ;  and 
begins  to  be  a  dissolvent  of  character,  directly  it  is  let  out  from 
under  the  same  ?  Comparing  the  moral  and  religious  influence  of 
simple  intellectualism  with  the  moral  and  religious  influence  of 
beauty,  it  seems  to  me  there  is  not  much  choice  between  them.  A 
man  under  the  supremacy  of  intellectualism  is  as  much  a  sinner  and 
as  much  in  hell  as  a  man  under  the  supreme  rule  of  beauty.  It  does 
not  seem  so  at  first ;  and  if  Jesus  Christ  had  not  come  among  us  and 
given  us  the  benefit  of  his  awful  stroke  of  moral  analysis,  we  should 
never  have  got  into  this  matter  to  any  practical  purpose.  But  he 
has  come,  and  now  intellectualism  as  the  reigning  purpose  and  joy 
of  life  has  little  to  say  for  itself.  It  carries  a  man  down  always.  It 
does  not  make  him  lackadaisical  necessarily.  On  the  contrary  he 
may  be  exceedingly  athletic  and  formidable.  When  John  Milton 
portrayed  Satan,  he  did  not  consider  it  necessary  to  make  him  a 
milksop  nor  to  effeminate  him  at  any  point.  He,  Satan,  was  a  very 
gifted  person,  and  what  he  could  not  do  no  finite  creature  could. 
But  intellectuality,  a  life  moulded,  modulated  and  marshalled  under 
intellectual  influences  pure  and  simple,  is  perdition  in  every  essential 
element  of  perdition.  How  then  does  it  deserve  to  be  put  above 
the  Beautiful  as  a  supreme  formative  force  ? 

I  reply,  the  Beautiful,  if  let  alone,  does  work  emasculation  in 
the  matter  of  simple  strength.  It  gradually  kills  the  more  strenuous 
elements  in  character.  It  undermines  heroism.  A  solid  nationality 
like  the  Puritan  commonwealth  cannot  be  built  on  it.  Moreover  I 
think  it  may  be  true  that  the  Beautiful,  as  being  more  distinctly 
sensuous  than  the  intellectual  has  a  more  direct  affinity  with  practical 
sensualism  than  intellectualism  has.  I  suspect  that  an  examination 
of  the  facts  of  history,  a  reference  to  peoples  and  periods  that  have 
surrendered  to  the  Beautiful,  might  show  that  to  be  so.  So  that  the 
Beautiful  does  stand  second  to  the  intellectual  as  a  good  force  in 
life.  And  it  stands  second  to  the  ethical,  of  course.  To  settle  that 
we  have  only  to  refer  to  the  experiments  made  by  individuals  and 
by  communities,  with  the  ethical  as  a  dominant  factor  of  develop- 
ment. Let  a  man  put  his  conscience  and  his  religious  nature  of 
which  his  conscience  is  a  part,  in  the  ascendant,  and  what  does  he 


272  YALE  LECTURES. 

come  to  ?  As  a  matter  of  fact,  what  does  he  come  to  ?  What  kind 
of  a  man  does  he  make  ?  And  how  does  he  feel  within  his  own  self? 
Is  he  a  happy  man  ?  Do  his  faculties  in  him  act  as  though  they 
felt  that  a  spurious  king  was  set  over  them  when  conscience  was 
enthroned  ?  Do  they  not  rather  show  an  utter  contentment  and 
pull  along  in  their  own  particular  function,  each  one  blithely,  sing- 
ing even  as  the  worlds  sing,  because  they  are  marshalled  so  orderly? 
Also  in  every  case  what  is  the  national  result  of  an  enthroned  con- 
science ?  History  has  but  one  voice  in  this  matter.  On  the  other 
hand,  what  is  the  uniform  consequence  when  such  a  faculty  or  impulse 
as  vanity  or  combativeness  or  love  of  dominion  or  bodily  lust  reigns 
in  a  man  or  among  a  people  ?  The  innumerable  intermeddlings  with 
the  monarchy  of  the  conscience  and  religion,  by  the  several  other 
powers  of  man,  overwhelmingly  settle  the  question  of  the  de  jure 
power.     So  then  the  Beautiful  must  abdicate. 

Or  try  the  question  in  this  way  :  Conceive  the  Beautiful  as 
eliminated  from  the  physical  creation ;  would  there  be  anything 
worth  while  left  ?  Yes,  we  should  still  have  structure  and  mass  and 
utility.  Quite  an  array  of  things  solid  and  sizable  ;  that  is,  if  we 
include  in  the  Beautiful  only  the  esthetic  conception.  When  we 
speak  of  structure,  and  of  utility  as  resulting  from  structure,  we  have 
passed  into  the  realm  of  intellectual  beauty,  to  be  sure,  but  we  have 
not  passed  into  esthetics  strictly.  A  perfectly  neutral  universe,  as 
regards  esthetics,  would  be  quite  a  universe,  I  say.  So  might  an 
unesthetic  man  be  quite  a  man,  as  is  numerously  proven  every  day. 
And  a  Deity  too  might  be  very  adorable  who  did  not  love  beauty 
and  cared  not  to  create  a  beautiful  universe.  But  take  from  the 
Deity  and  from  the  man  and  from  the  universe  every  shred  and 
semblance  of  the  moral,  or  the  intellectual,  or  the  true,  and  what  is 
there  left?  It  would  take  a  whole  week's  thinking  to  determine 
whether  we  had  anything  left.  Certain  it  is  that  what  was  left  would 
not  be  worth  retaining — even  as  a  man  when  dead  is  no  longer 
worth  keeping. 

I  propose  to  give  now  some  concrete  illustrations  of  an  undue 
surrender  to  beauty.  And  as  I  have  a  company  of  embryo  preachers 
before  me,  I  will  begin  with  the  sermon.  A  man  starts  out  to  make 
a  beautiful  sermon.  That  is  what  he  is  after.  I  am  ashamed  to 
have  anything  to  do  with  such  a  person,  even  for  the  purpose  of 
illustration ;  but  as  such  persons  occasionally  appear,  and  particu- 
larly as  any  preacher  (especially  a  young  one)  is  liable  to  be  caught 


YALE  LECTURES.  273 

in  a  temporary  passion  for  the  beautiful  some  day,  and  to  get  up 
discourses  accordingly,  I  think  I  had  better  take  hold  of  the  case. 
Well,  the  beautiful  sermon  is  started,  and  I  will  tell  you  what  the 
man  will  do.  He  has  already  surrendered  all  intention  of  utility  or 
usefulness.  The  homiletical  impulse  has  vacated  and  the  esthetical 
impulse  has  come  in.  A  man  who  has  come  along  so  far  as  that 
may  be  looked  to  to  do  anything.  First  he  proceeds  to  forget 
that  the  first  beauty  of  a  discourse — the  first  chronologically  and  the 
first  logically — the  beauty  in  fact  without  which  no  other  real  beauty 
is  possible — lies  in  organization,  and  is  not  sensuous  but  intellectual. 
When  God  would  make  a  beautiful  man,  he  provides  a  frame  for  him, 
not  any  frame,  but  a  frame  that  will  hang  together  and  be  specific, 
a  man's  frame,  not  a  brute's,  and  a  frame  not  only  that  will  hang 
together,  but  will  hang  together  creditably,  proportionally  ;  no  one 
member  too  long  for  the  rest,  or  too  short  for  the  rest,  or  too  heavy 
or  too  light ;  a  skeleton  which  when  clothed  on  with  flesh  will  be 
seen  to  be  beautiful  and  will  pay  for  all  the  fleshly  decoration.  To 
decorate  a  malformation  would  be  incongruous.  Every  malformed 
man,  if  he  could  have  been  permitted  to  put  in  a  single  word  before- 
hand, would  have  said,  "  Please  omit  decoration  and  give  me  a 
form."  I  should  like  to  be  decorated  and  formed  both,  but  if  that 
is  too  much  to  ask,  as  between  the  two  give  me  form.  And  that 
sermonizer  ought  to  feel  in  the  same  way,  but  he  does  not.  He 
wants  decoration  ;  decoration  irrespective  of  the  frame  ;  decoration 
whether  there  be  any  frame  or  not. 

As  I  am  upon  the  subject  of  beautiful  organization,  I  might  as 
well  say  here,  parenthetically,  that  I  know  of  no  one  rule  for  secur- 
ing it  so  important  as  this.  Take  the  good  of  your  congregation  for 
your  aim ;  not  merely  their  general  good,  but  their  specific  good 
through  this  subject  you  have  chosen ;  get  your  intention  high  up 
in  that  way ;  clarify  it ;  simplify  it ;  state  to  yourself  exactly  what 
you  are  after ;  and  then  shape  your  materials,  organize  them  hero- 
ically on  that  objective.  And  it  will  require  some  heroism.  Your 
fondness  for  this  and  that  in  your  accumulated  material,  will  make 
you  want  to  put  it  in.  It  is  something  you  have  labored  on  and 
dug  out  perhaps  ;  or  it  is  a  scrap  of  learning ;  or  there  is  a  glitter 
of  the  ideal  in  it  that  pleases  you  ;  or  it  is  a  touch  of  pathos  which 
might  melt  somebody.  There  are  numerous  temptations  and  you 
will  need  to  be  a  hero  and  ask  only,  does  that  item  bear  naturally 
and  directly  on  my  objective?     Moving  among  the  heaps  of  good 


274  YALE  LECTURES. 

stuff  that  you  have  got  together,  in  that  constant,  courageous  self- 
denial,  you  are  apt  to  develope  a  plan  of  your  subject  that  is  simple, 
coherent,  orderly,  compact,  with  an  all-engulfing  trend,  like  the  pull 
of  a  raceway ;  a  veritable  organism,  a  thing  of  beauty  indeed — 
intellectual  beauty.  You  did  not  aim  at  beauty.  You  aimed  at  use 
and  God  rewarded  you  for  it  by  carrying  you  unconsciously  into 
beauty,  as  he  always  does. 

But  our  man  whom  we  left  a  moment  ago,  does  not  propose  to 
waste  himself  on  such  plain  work  as  that.  He  does  not  choose  to 
get  beauty  unconsciously,  or  to  put  up  with  a  kind  of  beauty  so  little 
obvious  to  the  multitude  as  beauty  structural.  If  he  can  only  get 
flesh,  real  pink  flesh,  something  pretty  and  posy-like,  he  will  run  the 
risk  of  the  frame.  Well,  it  is  an  instructive  fact  that  even  posies 
have  to  have  something  to  grow  in  or  on.  In  order  to  satisfactory 
ornament,  there  must  be  something  to  ornament.  Ornament  con- 
sidered as  an  independent  beauty-spot,  is  one  of  the  most  ineffective 
and  ridiculous  of  things.  Ornament — ornament  legitimate  and 
telling — is  simply  and  always  the  natural  and  spontaneous  efflores- 
cence of  structure.  How  that  one  definition  damns  scores  of  ambi- 
tious art-works,  sermons,  buildings,  paintings,  musical  products  ! 
It  is  a  truism  in  architecture  that  all  adornments  must  be  congruous 
to  the  buildings  that  they  undertake  to  adorn ;  a  rule  which  I 
expressed  in  the  essence  of  it,  when  I  said  adornment  is  structure 
efflorescent.  That  is,  there  must  be  so  perfect  harmony  between  a 
building  and  its  decorations,  that  it  is  as  though,  and  makes  one 
feel  as  though,  the  building  had  blossomed.  The  congruity  in 
question  lies  in  several  particulars.  The  ornaments  must  be  suitable 
to  the  intention  of  the  building.  A  gothic  cathedral  must  not  be 
called  upon  to  blossom  into  ungothic  or  unreligious  or  pagan  embel- 
lishments. Also  the  ornaments  must  be  suitable  to  the  structure  of 
the  building  ■  and  to  its  position  and  surroundings ;  and  to  some 
other  things  perhaps.  But  I  must  not  get  too  far  away  from  sermons. 
However  I  am  not  far  away  when  I  am  naming  the  laws  of  congruity 
in  art.  For  example,  a  sermon  may  be  gothic  or  Moorish  or  Greek, 
or  of  the  New  England  meeting-house  type.  Christianity  is  pretty 
diversified  in  its  aspects  and  contents  and  admits  a  good  variety  of 
sermons,  but  Moorish  embellishments  on  a  gothic  sermon,  or  Jeremy- 
Taylorisms  festooning  Jonathan  Edwards,  were  grotesque.  And  a 
Moorish  sermon  at  a  funeral  were  scarcely  the  thing. 

When  it  is  once  settled  that  a  discourse  is  to  be  a  sermon,  a 


YALE  LECTURES.  275 

multitude  of  beautiful  things  are  ruled  out.  That  one  decision 
excludes  them.  Were  it  a  political  speech  or  a  Fourth  of  July  Ora- 
tion, or  an  address  of  courtesy  or  a  military  proclamation  or  a  nuptial 
discourse  it  would  be  different ;  certain  flowers  might  then  be  let  in, 
which  now  must  be  foregone,  and  even  an  occasional  spangle  might 
not  be  offensive.  But  the  precise  point  I  wish  to  press  just  now  is, 
that  when  the  sermonizer  has  made  the  structure  of  his  discourse 
beautiful  he  has  virtually  provided  for  every  other  beauty  of  pulpit 
utterance  that  is  suitable  and  is  possible  to  him.  The  mind  that  has 
the  grace  and  the  vigor  and  the  moral  purpose  to  organize  such  a 
structure  as  I  have  described,  will  find  always  as  it  moves  along  in 
the  process  of  amplification  upon  that  structure,  that  those  very 
mental  qualities  which  originated  the  structure,  do  also  joyfully 
originate  all  along  the  decorations  thereof;  congruous  decorations, 
of  course,  because  structure  and  decoration  are  the  issue  of  the  self- 
same mind  ;  the  fine  purpose  in  the  man,  that  presided  over  his 
work  of  organization  ;  the  purpose  to  do  a  definite  good  to  a  certain 
congregation,  by  the  use  of  a  certain  subject,  on  a  certain  occasion. 
That  purpose  also  presides  over  his  entire  movement  through  the 
subject  when  he  comes  to  write  it  out,  and  infallibly  selects  suitable 
details  of  beauty,  if  indeed  it  be  proper  to  say  that  he  selects  at  all. 
He  does  not.  No,  out  of  such  a  mind  as  that,  agitated  by  the  work 
it  is  in,  beauties  spring  of  themselves.  The  man  does  not  call  them  ; 
he  simply  ferments  in  the  stress  of  noble  endeavor,  and  they  come. 
As  he  is  but  partially  sanctified  at  best,  and  but  imperfectly  disci- 
plined and  cultured  in  his  intellect,  the  probability  is  that  some 
things  will  spring  out  of  him  that  are  more  sumptuous  than  suitable  ; 
heavy  dabs  of  color  that  need  to  be  reduced,  heavy  tones  that  do 
not  harmonize  with  the  general  flow  of  his  music  ;  ramping,  sudden 
growths  that  spoil  the  proportions  of  his  landscape  ;  spurts  of  energy 
that  spurted  before  he  knew  it ;  but  such  a  man  as  he,  will  certainly 
see  these  things  and  go  back  upon  them  with  a  swift  vengeance. 
He  knows  that  a  mere  detail  has  no  business  to  be  springing  into 
the  foreground  and  attracting  all  observers,  even  if  it  be  a  bewitching 
detail  in  itself  considered — it  cannot  be  considered  in  itself;  it  is 
but  one  thing  in  a  great  whole,  and  when  one  thing  in  a  great  whole 
sets  up  to  be  considered  by  itself,  it  has  outraged  the  whole ;  in 
proper  subordination  and  congruity  to  the  whole  it  can  make  its  own 
valuable  addition  to  the  solid  effect  of  the  whole.  Perhaps  no  one 
can  detect  that  contribution,  but  it  is  there ;  even  as  in  a  perfectly 


276  YALE  LECTURES. 

blended  chorus  the  most  peeping  voice  tells  to  a  mathematical  cer- 
tainty, though  no  mortal  could  find  the  same.  But  an  insubordinate 
detail  is  a  practical  nuisance.  It  nullifies  a  sermon.  That  is,  its 
whole  effect  is  towards  nullification.  And  when  a  sufficient  number 
of  insubordinate  details  assemble  themselves  in  a  sermon,  with  a 
conceit  of  their  own  fascination,  a  sermon  is  unshapely  and  spoiled. 

And  the  man  who  starts  to  make  a  sermon  that  shall  be  beauti- 
ful, lands  just  there  ;  in  no  sermon  at  all,  but  in  a  miniature  of  what 
the  universe  would  be,  provided  structure  and  structural  melody  were 
ignored  all  through  it  and  the  Creator  had  directed  his  undivided 
attention  to  sensuous  beauty-effects.  By  the  way,  I  suppose  that 
word  beauty,  if  we  are  going  to  be  strict  and  further  our  own  con- 
venience in  the  discussion  of  beauty,  should  be  confined  to  sensuou 
impressions  and  not  be  permitted  to  include  any  supersensible  reality 
whatever.  However  I  have  shackled  along  so  far  without  confining 
it,  and  possibly  I  can  go  on  so  to  the  end.  By  my  reference  to  the 
sermon  I  have  now  illustrated  our  great  means  of  security  against 
beauty.  It  must  be  subjected  to  that  intellectual  thing,  truth,  and 
to  that  good  thing,  religion.  Artists  must  go  for  intellectual  and 
ethical  ends  supremely  and  for  esthetic  ends  secondarily.  And 
Churches  and  Christian  denominations  must  seek  art  for  moral  ends 
and  not  just  for  the  luxury  and  the  ravishment  of  beauty. 

Take  it  in  architecture.  First,  certain  utilities  must  be  thor- 
oughly made  sure  in  a  Church  edifice.  The  building  must  accom- 
modate the  assembly.  It  must  not  be  built  in  a  way  to  tumble 
down,  either  the  day  of  dedication  or  any  other  day  to  come.  The 
materials  must  be  as  indestructible  as  is  convenient  and  they  must 
be  put  together  to  stay.  The  space  enclosed  by  the  walls  must  be 
convenient  for  the  particular  uses  of  the  people  who  built  them.  The 
possibility  of  seeing  and  hearing  must  be  attended  to.  Then  again, 
in  a  building  to  be  used  for  God's  service,  as  that  building  is,  every 
visible  thing  must  be  real.  There  should  not  be  pretended  cornices 
and  pillars  and  architectural  effects  accomplished  by  hypocritical 
frescoes ;  which  frescoes  are  supposed  to  be  most  satisfactory 
according  as  they  most  nearly  succeed  in  deceiving  somebody.  But 
after  all  these  points  of  construction,  utility  and  moral  honesty  are 
covered,  the  question  of  beauty  comes  in  well. 

May  beauty  come  in  ?  May  art  have  a  chance  ?  The  masons 
and  the  carpenters  and  all  the  utilitarians  have  had  their  chance  or 
are  to  have,  and  now  is  there  anything  more?     May  we  put  any  cost 


YALE  LECTURES.  277 

on  that  building,  over  and  above  any  conceivable  utility,  and  make 
that  cost  simply  an  offering  to  Him?  Will  He  feel  like  rejecting 
our  precious  ointment,  if  instead  of  selling  it  to  convert  heathen,  we 
wastefully  pour  it  out  in  that  pious  way?  Moreover  inasmuch  as 
this  building  is  for  the  one  end  of  personal  salvation,  can  we  further 
that  end  by  some  efforts  now  that  are  artistic  ?  Is  a  man  saved  as 
much  as  he  might  be  when  he  is  simply  converted,  or  even  sancti- 
fied? Is  it  any  good  to  have  his  converted  and  sanctified  soul 
refined  ?  A  refined  saint  seems  to  be  more  current  in  the  world 
than  an  unrefined  one.  If  you  are  about  to  come  to  close  quarters 
with  him,  marry  him  for  instance,  you  like  him  refined.  If  you  are 
going  to  transact  business  with  him,  or  do  anything  with  him  that 
brings  you  near  enough  to  catch  his  insensible  emanations,  his  mag- 
netism as  it  is  sometimes  called,  the  more  refined  he  is  the  better. 
You  have  no  prejudice  against  his  holiness  or  his  good  principles, 
but  if  in  addition  to  that  he  is  civilized,  you  have  no  objection. 
There  is  no  such  civilizer  as  regeneration  by  the  spirit  of  God,  taken 
in  its  effect,  both  direct  and  remote.  That  is  so.  Still,  a  person 
civilized  to  the  extent  of  being  regenerated,  may  for  the  time  being 
be  austere,  uninformed,  in  part  unmodulated  and  unrelishable. 
Therefore  is  there  any  way  by  which  the  Church  building  where  he 
fondly  worships  can  be  turned  in  upon  him  for  purposes  of  culture, 
and  at  the  same  time  not  retard  his  piety  ? 

First  of  all,  knowing  as  we  do  the  rather  stiffening  effect  of 
right  lines,  supposing  we  try  curves  on  him  a  little,  in  the  construc- 
tion of  the  building.  You  get  that  man  travelling  along  a  curve  and 
he  has  got  to  be  graceful.  Curves  have  insensible  emanations  as 
well  as  men,  and  the  insensible  emanations  of  a  curve  are  very  con- 
genial and  very  improving,  as  compared  to  the  insensible  emana- 
tions of  a  zig-zag.  Also  if  this  curve  that  has  taken  hold  of  this 
man,  winds  off  into  mystery,  as  curves  often  will,  that  will  do  no 
hurt.  That  being  led  off  into  mystery  may  be  an  advantage  to  his 
present  square-cut  and  realistic  make-up,  it  may  be,  even  modify  his 
theology.  It  need  not  injure  or  alter  the  substance  of  his  theology, 
but  around  that  substance  it  may  throw  an  atmosphere  which,  while 
it  might  not  make  much  of  a  show  on  Fairbanks'  standard  scales, 
could  easily  be  as  valuable  to  this  man  as  though  it  did.  And  then 
there  is  what  John  Milton  has  called  a  dim  religious  light,  meaning 
to  intimate,  as  I  understand,  that  the  light  in  question  is  religious 
because  dim  ;  though  of  course,  as  was  also  intimated  by  this  same 


278  YALE  LECTURES. 

Milton,  the  light  gets  a  part  of  its  religiousness  from  the  fact  that  it 
is  strained  through 

Storied  windows  richly  dight — 
through  windows,  that  is,  that  have  some  sort  of  religious  story  to 
tell,  and  tell  it  ornately,  in  colors.  Supposing  we  experiment  on 
our  man  with  that.  Probably  he  is  a  strenuous  and  busy  person  all 
days,  save  Sunday,  and  cannot  in  the  week  be  caught  in  that  leisure- 
liness  of  mind  which  is  quite  necessary  to  a  full  and  deep  impres- 
sion upon  his  sensibilities  by  any  good  and  Christian  story.  But 
here  now  in  his  pew  he  sits,  with  his  work  laid  aside,  with  his  best 
clothes  and  their  silent  culture  on  him,  voluntarily  offering  himself 
to  be  impressed.  To  be  sure,  he  mostly  faces  towards  his  minister, 
determined  to  receive  impressions  from  that  particular  quarter ;  but 
when  a  man  is  intent  in  one  direction,  looking  out  his  front  door,  all 
his  side  and  back  doors  are  so  much  the  more  exposed ;  just  as 
people  are  run  over  by  watching  approaching  trains  more  often  than 
in  any  other  way ;  the  train  they  are  not  watching  then  gets  its 
chance  at  them.  Multitudes  of  people  you  cannot  run  over  except 
as  you  get  them  looking  out  for  a  particular  train.  For  example, 
there  is  many  a  hater  of  art  and  beauty  in  Churches,  who  has  it  for 
his  established  principle  to  watch  the  minister  and  repudiate  the 
gothic  or  other  fine  architecture  all  about  him  as  he  sits,  and  the 
storied  windows  and  the  heavenly  preaching  of  the  choir  ;  but  I  say 
unto  you,  verily,  his  side  and  back  doors  are  exposed,  and  to  such 
an  extent  that  after  a  few  years  he  is  not  the  man  he  used  to  be,  as 
some  accidental  test  applied  to  him  shows. 

It  is  proposed  to  abolish  the  choir  and  to  have  congregational 
singing ;  and  to  his  own  surprise  and  alarm  he  discovers  that  he 
does  not  wish  that  to  be  done.  Or  his  artistic  edifice  wherein  he 
has  sat  so  long  burns  up,  and  the  disheartened  and  economical 
congregation  are  inclined  to  put  up  now  that  infinitely  reiterated, 
unsculptured  and  unbedight  edifice  wherewith  we  are  all  familiar, 
when  lo  !  he  finds  himself  going  over  to  the  mystical  Babylon  again 
and  advocating  her  fornications.  He  is  the  victim  of  insensible 
emanations.  He  knew  that  his  preacher  emanated.  He  always 
knew  that.  That  is  the  preacher's  avowed  business.  But  he  had 
not  known  that  all  these  other  influences  were  emanating ;  that  the 
Gospel,  when  preached  in  a  white-light  interior,  is  not  the  same 
that  it  is  when  preached  in  a  dim  religious  light,  that  dim  religious 
light  being  also  supported  and  carried  home  by  the  numerous  other 


YALE  LECTURES.  279 

esthetic  blandishments  which  are  apt  to  characterize  a  Church 
interior  that  has  ventured  along  so  far  as  to  invoke  the  aid  of  stained 
glass  and  blazoned  holy  stories.  The  Gospel  remains  the  same  in 
whatever  light,  as  regards  its  substantial  grandeur,  tenderness  and 
efficacy ;  but  remember  always  that  the  Gospel  may  be  received  by 
a  person  in  two  modes  :  first,  by  eruption,  secondly,  by  saturation. 
And  when  you  come  to  that  second  mode,  these  esthetics  that  I  am 
describing  get  their  chance. 

Even  preachers  may  be  divided  into  two  great  classes,  the 
irruptive  and  the  saturative,  the  last  getting  their  saturative  quality 
largely  by  their  culture,  their  tone,  their  art-quality,  their  likeness  to 
storied  windows  and  religious  architecture  and  the  sanctified  com- 
positions of  the  great  tone-masters  of  the  world.  Some  four  years 
ago,  when  I  delivered  a  lecture  here  on  our  Congregational  worship 
and  proposed  some  enlargement  of  ritual  among  us,  the  late  Dr. 
Bacon,  who  was  present,  said  that  I  had  been  spoiled  by  my  Upjohn 
Church.  Which  was  only  what  I  am  now  saying,  that  the  saturative 
form  of  impression  is  one  of  the  forms,  and  a  strong  one  too.  I 
wish  my  Upjohn  Church  had  got  at  me  fifty  years  ago  and  that  my 
constitutional  irruptiveness  had  had  fifty  years  of  chastisement.  As 
it  is,  I  must  irrupt,  more  or  less,  so  long  as  I  live.  However  I  have 
come  at  least  to  recognize  the  other  more  silent  and  gentle  process, 
the  process  saturative,  and  to  be  willing  to  speak  a  word  to  you  in 
its  behalf,  as  I  am  doing  this  day.  I  do  not  know  that  I  should  feel 
that  I  had  risen  to  the  full  size  of  such  an  occasion  as  this  if  I  should 
spend  my  whole  hour  expounding  so  small  a  detail  in  the  general 
subject  of  beauty  and  its  influence,  as  a  dim  religious  light;  still  I 
have  noticed  that  an  entire  large  topic  is  often  contained  in  some 
single  one  of  its  elements,  even  as  a  tree  is  completely  discovered 
in  its  smallest  leaf.  Just  let  a  man  discuss  the  storied  window  ques- 
tion clear  to  the  bottom,  and  he  has  broken  the  back  of  the  whole 
difficulty  in  the  matter  of  esthetics  and  religion.  It  is  frequently 
taken  for  granted  that  these  elements  of  impression  for  which  I  plead 
— the  art  elements — are  not  so  much  elements  of  impression  or  use, 
as  elements  of  fancy,  entertainment  and  enjoyment,  and  are  not 
worth  considering  strenuously,  on  that  account.  But  it  is  not  so. 
Take  that  inconsiderable  circumstance,  the  storied  or  colored  win- 
dow, as  an  illustration.  The  light  thus  secured  has  the  following 
not  at  all  trivial  recommendations. 

It  sequesters  an  assembly  seven  times  more  than  does  an  untoned 


280  YALE  LECTURES. 

light,  that  is,  it  makes  them  feel  that  they  have  left  the  street,  shop 
and  home,  the  flow  of  daily  and  common  life,  and  are  now  shut  in 
with  God  and  things  divine.  Next,  it  immerses  them,  unperceivedly 
perhaps,  but  none  the  less  on  that  account,  in  the  mysterious  ;  that 
feature  of  religion  which  saturates  the  sensibilities  as  profitably  as 
any  other  feature,  it  may  be.  At  any  rate  no  one  has  taken  the  full 
stress  of  his  religion  till  he  has  felt  the  touch  of  its  mystery.  Blessed 
be  anything  that  helps  bring  that  about.  Next,  so  much  of  dimness 
as  any  reasonable  interior  is  likely  to  have  is  promotive  of  mental 
tranquility ;  that  one  thing  most  necessary  to  get,  before  a  man's 
religious  privileges  begin  to  soak  in  very  much.  That  is  physiology 
in  part.  The  eye  here  must  have  repose,  the  rest  of  shadow,  before 
the  mind  can  have  repose  and  the  mental  receptivity  thereof.  I  do 
not  understand  however,  that  this  mental  advantage  of  shadow  rests 
wholly  on  physiology ;  I  fancy  it  is  an  ultimate  fact  of  the  human 
mind  that  dimness  inclines  one  to  meditativeness,  brooding,  senti- 
ment and  movements  of  the  soul  far-out  and  away.  Behold  the 
genial  influences  of  the  night.  The  numerous  staring  visibilities  of 
the  day  are  then  withdrawn.  They  no  longer  occupy  the  mind. 
And  with  that  the  numerous  noises  of  the  day  are  hushed.  And 
thus  released,  the  intellect  no  longer  operates  as  simple  intellect, 
but  the  sensibilities  are  called  in.  A  man's  deeper  self  and  his 
honester  self  and  his  tenderer  self  and  all  his  better  and  choicer  self 
comes  forward  and  begins  to  play.  Therefore  the  night  is  a  rare 
time  for  lovers,  as  has  been  immemorially  understood.  And  just  as 
rare  a  time  is  it  for  piety  to  expatiate  upon  its  holy  and  nourishing 
themes  and  search  out  its  waters  of  comfort.  It  is  a  time  for  remi- 
niscence too ;  a  time,  in  fact,  for  everything  sedate  and  mellow  and 
saturative.  So  then,  a  sacred  interior  that  borrows  a  little  of  this 
same  night-witchery,  has  done  a  good  thing.  It  has  prepared  an 
atmosphere,  a  mental  atmosphere,  wherein  the  Gospel  can  do  its 
very  best.  For  the  Gospel  has  not  done  its  best  when  it  has  simply 
iaid  down  its  propositions.  Those  invulnerable  propositions  do  not 
more  need  to  be  uttered  forth  in  and  through  a  vibratory  medium, 
the  air,  than  they  need  to  go  forth  through  what  I  will  call  an 
esthetic  medium,  made  up  of  the  impalpable  influences  of  softened 
light,  strong  and  refined  architecture,  truly  religious,  chaste  and 
rational  decoration  and  an  order  and  movement  of  service  harmo- 
nious with  them  all. 

It  may  occur  to  some  of  you  that  Christianity  is  an  essentially 


YALE  LECTURES.  281 

cheerful  religion,  and  is  imposed  upon  therefore  when  domiciled  in 
any  the  least  sombreness,  such  as  dim  lights  and  gothic  effects.  I 
think  we  shall  come  to  the  truth  in  this  matter,  if  we  take  one  look, 
fair  and  square,  at  Him  who  is  Christianity  impersonated.  God 
forbid  that  we  should  call  him  uncheerful.  But  God  forbid  also  that 
we  should  call  him  cheerful  in  the  same  sense  that  birds  and  squir- 
rels are,  or  even  the  ancient  Greeks,  who  have  so  filled  the  world 
with  their  incomparable  happy  art.  Jesus  was  a  man  of  sorrows  and 
acquainted  with  grief;  not  alone  as  bowed  down  under  a  heavy 
Mediatorship  which  reached  its  climax  on  Calvary,  and  then  melted 
away  into  the  flow  of  a  great  triumph  ;  but  as  essentially,  constitu- 
tionally and  forever  a  chastened  person.  Go  back  to  that  date  in  the 
dateless  eternity  when  the  triune  God  alone  was,  and  why  was  God 
not  even  then  what  for  lack  of  a  better  word  I  will  call  chastened  ? 
What  should  we  think  of  a  Being  who,  standing  at  that  point,  con- 
templating the  fact  that  his  own  good  and  blessed  nature  made  it 
incumbent  on  him  to  originate  by  and  by  such  a  universe  of  contin- 
gencies and  shadows  as  this  universe  of  ours,  could  be  otherwise 
than  toned  by  it  ?  Go  forward  also  to  that  forthcoming  and  eventual 
date  when  that  apostolic  word,  "  Where  sin  abounded  grace  did 
much  more  abound,"  shall  have  been  completely  fulfilled,  and  the 
whole  groaning  and  travailing  creation  shall  have  been  brought  out 
of  its  pain  into  the  glorious  liberty  of  the  children  of  God  ;  the  best 
time,  on  the  whole,  the  creation  ever  saw :  and  even  then  there 
will  be  something  not  unlike  a  minor  chord  in  the  universal  re- 
joicing. Even  as  Hillhouse  meant  to  hint,  I  suppose,  in  that  hymn 
of  his  where  he  addressed  the  angels  who  never  fell,  and  said  to 
them  : 

Earth  has  a  joy  unknown  to  heaven — 
The  new-born  peace  of  sin  forgiven. 
Ye,  on  your  harps,  must  lean  to  hear 
A  secret  chord  that  mine  will  bear. 

That  reminiscent  element  in  earth's  final  joy,  the  remembrance 
of  sin,  will  eternally  differentiate  it  from  all  other  joys,  and  it  is 
impossible  not  to  believe  that  the  enthroned  Jesus,  gone  victoriously 
to  the  right  hand  of  God,  in  his  undiminished  and  unchangeable 
humanity,  will  evermore  be  something  other  than  he  would  have 
been,  other  in  his  feelings,  other  in  the  entire  play  of  his  soul,  by 
reason  of  what  he  has  passed  through ;  and  also  by  reason  of  the 
J9 


282  YALE  LECTURES. 

tremendous  fact  that  in  spite  of  all  he  has  passed  through,  hell  is 
not  yet  obliterated  from  the  map  of  the  universe,  and  if  our  ortho- 
doxy be  true,  never  will  be. 

My  Brethren,  gothic  architecture,  with  its  seriousness  and 
grandeur,  its  sombreness,  as  some  would  say,  is  an  inevitable  influ- 
ence from  Jesus  of  Nazareth.  The  Greek  temple  is  not.  The  Greek 
temple  is  not  formulated  on  a  serious  back-ground.  Greek  archi- 
tecture is  not  the  product  of  spiritual  struggle.  Once  in  a  while  a 
Church  building  committee,  caught  by  its  historic  renown  and 
deluded  by  the  idea  that  grave  architecture  may  come  to  be  weari- 
some if  profusely  repeated,  proceed  to  set  up  a  Greek  form  to  wor- 
ship in ;  just  as  painters  and  sculptors  sometimes  think  they  have 
chosen  their  best  possible  subject  when  they  have  selected  some 
figure  or  scene  from  classical  mythology  and  have  laid  themselves 
out  on  that — on  some  pagan  Deity,  some  Bacchus,  some  Faun, 
some  Mercury  or  some  Venus.  The  truth  is,  we  have  Bacchuses 
and  Venuses  enough  of  our  own,  if  it  is  important  that  art  should 
keep  ori  in  that  way.  But  really  and  soberly,  when  you  come  to 
religion  and  religious  subjects,  I  humbly  venture  the  remark  that 
Christianity  need  not  knock  under  to  heathenism.  We  will  take 
what  is  good,  refined  and  great  in  the  classical  civilizations,  and 
make  what  use  of  them  we  can  ;  and  we  will  even  borrow  ideas  from 
their  sacred  buildings  ;  but  Christianity  has  developed  an  architec- 
ture of  her  own  ;  an  architecture  severely  chaste,  moral  and  sublime 
in  its  fundamental  tone,  but  quite  capable  of  being  warmed  and 
illumined  with  sober  touches  of  cheerfulness,  by  various  devices  not 
necessary  now  to  specify ;  touches  superimposed  on  that  solid  founda- 
tion-tone. I  do  not  know  anything  much  simpler  than  the  great 
cathedral  at  Cologne,  so  far  as  its  interior  structure  is  concerned. 
I  shall  never  quite  recover  from  those  unsculptured  stone  pillars  that 
there  bound  the  nave  and  stretch  away  into  the  upper  spaces.  The 
whole  moral  strength  of  simple  lines  is  there  developed.  But  there 
is  a  great  glory  of  windows  in  that  edifice,  that  for  one  thing ;  and 
when  in  1872  I  attended  an  early  morning  service  there,  and  the  sun 
in  the  east  inundated  all,  and  especially  the  sufficiently  adorned  and 
beautified  choir-space,  where  the  service  headed  up ;  I  felt  that  I 
never  saw  such  a  combination  and  sweet  mutual  interfusion  of  sub- 
limity and  beauty ;  the  sublimity  made  mellow  and  melodious  by 
the  beauty,  and  the  beauty  made  strong,  unenervating  and  moral  by 
the  sublimity.     I  am  not  here  to  be  fanatical  and  say  that  any  the 


YALE  LECTURES.  283 

least  departure  from  the  gothic  type  in  Church  edifices  is  unpardon- 
able ;  but  as  I  am  taking  time  to  show  how  the  Beautiful  may  be  let 
into  religion,  without  letting  in  softness  and  debility  and  ultimate 
demoralization,  to  wit,  by  subordinating  it  to  the  supremacy  of  the 
true  and  the  ethical,  I  do  like  to  insist  on  gravity  as  an  underlying 
quality  of  the  architecture  of  the  Church — gravity,  that  great  tone 
which  so  comes  into  the  gothic,  for  one.  Let  gravity  be  made  sure, 
and  certain  sane  and  robust  things  implied  therein ;  and  the  florid, 
the  sensuous,  the  artistic  will  not  be  likely  to  run  away  with  us. 

It  is  like  what  I  said  about  the  sermon  ;  make  sure  of  structure  ; 
get  into  you  the  true  structural  spirit,  and  the  decorations  will  come 
along  inoffensively  and  in  right  measure. 


ORDER  IN  SERMON  TOPICS. 


Gentlemen,  we  learn  by  the  mistakes  we  make  ;  that  for  one 
way ;  but  when  a  man  has  spent  a  half  century  or  so  making  mis- 
takes and  getting  wise  in  that  expensive  manner,  he  turns  to  those 
who  are  young,  with  a  feeling  that  they  ought  to  learn  by  his 
mistakes  and  not  be  at  the  miserable  expense  and  waste  of  time 
of  working  out  a  great  list  of  mistakes  of  their  own.  Hence  this 
constant  procession  of  lecturers  through  this  desk,  men  covered  all 
over  with  the  scars  of  their  mistakes  and  desiring  to  tell  you  where 
each  scar  came  from,  and  how  they  might  have  avoided  it  as  well  as 
not  had  they  only  known  what  they  now  know.  Each  lecturer 
is  seized  with  a  deep  fear,  now  and  then,  that  you  will  all  go  straight 
along  to  make  mistakes  for  yourselves  and  that  nothing  short  of 
actual  decapitation  will  stop  you ;  and  yet  none  the  less  does 
the  lecturer's  heart  within  him  yearn  to  lecture,  I  notice,  just  as 
though  there  were  some  good  in  it.  Well,  perhaps  there  is.  If  the 
universal  desire  of  man  for  immortality  rather  indicates  an  actual 
immortal  life,  may  it  not  be  that  this  universal  instinct  to  lecture,  on 
the  part  of  gentlemen  rich  in  mistakes,  is  a  hint  that  men  as  young 
as  you  are  benefited  by  being  lectured — one  in  a  dozen  of  you,  at 
least. 

These  thoughts,  pro  and  con,  came  to  me  as  I  started  out 
to  prepare  for  your  benefit  the  warning  in  black  and  white  which 
lies  here  before  me  now.  A  particular,  clear  warning  which  no 
man  happened  to  deliver  to  me  when  I  stood  where  you  stand. 

My  Brethren,  on  a  given  Lord's  Day,  a  minister  preaches  on 
a  certain  topic,  and  on  the  next  Lord's  Day  on  a  certain  other 
topic,  and  the  next  day  on  another ;  and  so  on  so  long  as  he  lives. 
But  what  determines  the  succession  of  those  topics?      Do  they 


YALE  LECTURES.  285 

cohere  by  any  coherency  however  attenuated,  or  do  they  stand 
each  one  in  absolute  cut-off  from  everything  before  and  after,  like  a 
solitary  island  in  mid-ocean?  Probably  there  is  some  sort  of 
coherency  in  the  business  :  so  much  at  least  as  prevails  in  a  string 
of  beads  which,  although  they  are  not  in  a  very  vital  connection 
and  cannot  be  said  to  hang  together,  are  at  least  hung  together ;  as 
the  cord  on  which  they  are  strung  very  well  knows  ;  but  is  the 
preacher's  coherency  intentional,  methodized,  bottomed  on  princi- 
ple, and  therefore  persistent  and  uniform?  Probably  not.  Mine 
never  was.  And  so  far  as  I  could  tell,  most  of  the  preachers  whom 
I  knew  were  just  like  me.  They  had  come  out  of  the  theological 
seminary  with  no  thoughts  at  all  on  the  subject,  and  they  skittered 
along  accordingly.  That  was  a  whole  generation  ago,  when  things 
were  darker  than  they  are  now,  and  young  men  had  more  facilities 
for  not  knowing  everything  than  they  have  at  this  present  time. 

I  shall  distribute  the  material  of  what  I  have  to  say  to  you  now 
in  regard  to  the  succession  of  the  preacher's  topics,  most  con- 
veniently for  myself  and  most  conveniently  for  you  who  must  listen 
to  me,  if  I  remark  ;  that  all  conceivable  laws  for  methodizing  this 
succession  classify  under  two  heads,  first,  laws  subjective,  secondly, 
laws  objective.  That  considerably  threadbare  terminology,  subject- 
ive and  objective,  is  so  convenient  that  one  dislikes  not  to  use  it 
occasionally.  If  it  were  not  convenient  it  would  not  be  threadbare. 
Roads  that  most  accommodate  the  public  want  are  those  that  have 
the  grass  all  worn  off,  of  course  ;  and  their  bareness  is  their  glory. 

Let  us  in  beginning  consider  the  subjective  laws  of  before  and 
after  in  pulpit  topics.  They  are  such  as  the  following:  First,  you 
may  get  your  themes  and  the  succession  of  them  from  the  abso- 
lutely unregulated  impulse  of  your  own  individuality.  Years  ago  I 
was  about  to  marry  a  certain  eminent  gentleman  whom  you  all 
know ;  and  the  appointed  hour  had  come  and  he  and  I  were  in 
a  room  by  ourselves  composing  our  minds  for  the  event,  presum- 
ably ;  and  presumably  rehearsing  our  parts  for  the  impending  cere- 
mony. Not  at  all,  Gentlemen,  not  at  all.  He  was  discoursing 
to  me  with  all  his  might  on  a  certain  very  remote  intellectual 
subject,  as  though  marrying  and  giving  in  marriage  were  already 
over  with  and  ended  for  this  world,  and  we  were  all  like  the  angels. 
"My  friend,"  said  I,  interrupting  him  at  last,  "do  you  not  wish  to 
know  what  particular  ceremony  I  am  about  to  use?"  "No,  Mr. 
Burton,  I  am  not  one  of  these  stereotyped  men,  you  know.     Follow 


286  YALE   LECTURES. 

your  own  genius,  and  it  will  be  perfectly  satisfactory  to  me."  Well, 
sermonizing  may  go  in  that  way.  The  preacher  opens  to  his 
congregation  the  special  matter  that  he  does  open  at  any  given 
time,  because  he,  the  preacher,  is  exactly  the  man  that  he  is. 
If  he  had  happened  to  be  a  different  man,  he  would  have  opened  a 
different  subject.  That  is  the  whole  explanation  of  what  his  people 
get  that  day.  A  most  precarious  state  of  things,  one  might  say. 
Being  fed  by  ravens  were  not  more  so. 

Secondly,  a  preacher  may  follow  the  impellings  of  the  Holy 
Ghost  in  his  own  soul,  and  may  have  it  for  his  rule  that  his  theme 
shall  be  given  him,  every  time,  supernaturally.  He  refuses  themes 
gotten  by  study,  or  human  conversation  or  any  sort  of  public  or 
private  hearing  or  seeing.  He  has  no  objection  to  study  or  to 
the  voluminous  say-so  of  authors,  conversationalists  or  lecturers ; 
but  when  he  comes  to  that  one  and  critical  act  of  selecting  next 
Sunday's  discourse,  he  proposes  to  just  empty  himself  of  all  mortal 
accumulations,  and  take  in  only  sky-born  things.  A  beautiful  atti- 
tude that.  And  a  fruitful  one,  too.  For  the  Holy  Spirit  has  no 
aversion  to  souls  thus  heroically  made  empty.  On  the  contrary,  he 
delights  to  enter  such ;  and  when  he  is  once  in,  he  is  delighted 
to  find  there,  after  all,  great  treasures  of  honest  accumulation ;  and 
out  of  those  treasures  to  pick  topics  for  the  man's  use  and  mark 
them  sometimes  so  that  he  can  know  them.  Almost  all  preachers 
— all  real  preachers — can  tell  of  experiences  they  have  had  in  that 
line.  Not  more  was  the  stock  and  stuff  of  prophecy  given  to 
the  Hebrew  prophets,  than  the  substance  of  sermons  is  given 
of  the  blessed  spirit  to  men  now,  over  and  over.  These  then  are 
the  two,  great  subjective  laws  of  choice,  as  regards  our  subjects. 
They  are  chosen  in  a  supreme  individualistic  impulse,  or  they 
are  chosen  as  chosen  for  us  by  the  Holy  Ghost. 

And  now  a  word  as  to  the  objective  laws  of  choice. 

First,  the  minister  may  move  about  much  among  his  people 
and  quietly  hunt  his  themes  in  their  hearts  and  lives.  Being  their 
minister  rather  than  another  people's,  he  naturally  wants  to  preach 
to  their  necessities ;  their  necessities  are  his  subjects  and  his  great 
business  is  contact  with  them,  with  a  view  to  know  them  and  make 
his  discoursings  touch  their  case.  Now  that  is  pastorly  and  sweetly 
Christian  in  the  intent  of  it :  moreover  it  is  oratorical,  for  the 
power  of  oratory  lies  one-half  in  adjustment  at  the  moment  to  the 
assembly  in  hand.     The  abortiveness  of  misadjusted  oratory  and 


YALE   LECTURES.  287 

the  death-sweat  to  the  speaker  himself,  if  he  is  sensitive  enough  to 
have  a  death-sweat  ever,  is  often  a  recollection  for  a  life-time. 
This  pastorly  preacher  whom  I  am  now  describing,  not  only  hunts 
hearts  and  lives  from  house  to  house  and  along  all  the  ways  of  life, 
with  a  view  to  suitable  discourses,  but  he  watches  from  afar  and  in  a 
general  way ;  peradventure,  the  public  mind  of  his  parish  may 
be  moved  by  a  common  wave  of  feeling,  by  some  occurrence 
of  common  interest,  as  a  conspicuous  and  impressive  death,  or 
a  startling  accident  or  a  great  crime  or  a  special  jubilation  or  a 
presidential  election  or  an  earthquake  or  an  outrageous  heresy 
or  a  crusade  of  the  women  of  the  community.  Many  things 
happen ;  and  the  pulpit  can  rehearse  them,  or  if  it  does  not 
exactly  rehearse  them,  it  can  shape  itself  to  them  in  the  abstract 
discussions  of  truth  that  are  full  of  application  to  the  present  situ- 
ation. Of  course,  there  is  no  coherency  in  such  subjects  as  they 
come  on  one  after  another ;  but  then  there  is  no  coherency  in  the 
successive  interesting  events  wherewith  they  deal. 

To  be  sure,  the  sensationalist  has  his  special  glee  in  pulpit 
topics  based  on  present  passing  phenomena  in  this  way ;  but  a 
decenter  minister  than  the  sensationalist  may  also  get  his  topics 
thus,  considerably.  On  the  whole,  it  does  seem  rational  that  a 
public  speaker  should  indicate  somehow  that  he  knows  what  partic- 
ular world  he  is  in  and  what  the  present,  passing  circumstances  are 
wherein  he  stands  and  speaks.  "I  speak  to  posterity,"  said  a  cer- 
tain disgusted  member  of  Congress,  when  his  fellow  members 
did  not  incline  to  listen  to  him  ;  and  we  are  all  familiar  with  Charles 
Lamb's  account  of  Coleridge's  getting  him  by  the  button  in  the 
Strand,  in  London,  to  talk  to  him  at  length  on  a  favorite  philo- 
sophical subject.  Lamb  says  that  he  took  out  his  knife  and  cut  off 
that  button  that  the  absorbed  philosopher  held  by,  and  went  his 
way  for  the  day ;  and  at  night  found  Coleridge  on  the  same  spot, 
going  on  as  briskly  as  ever.  Well  Brethren,  it  is  not  best  for 
preachers  to  be  too  much  absorbed  in  present  and  transient  circum- 
stances, but  we  had  better,  on  the  other  hand,  not  preach  to 
posterity  alone,  nor  to  the  empty  air.  I  can  recollect  the  day  when 
I  prided  myself  that  my  pulpit  interest,  for  me,  was  drawn  from 
my  subjects,  so  that  in  that  respect  I  did  not  care  whether  I  had 
many  to  listen  to  me  or  not,  or  whether  my  congregation  had  all 
cut  off  their  buttons  and  left.  That  was  going  too  far — as  I  think 
now. 


288  YALE   LECTURES. 

But  secondly  now  still  dwelling  on  topics  selected  on  object- 
ive principles  ;  a  minister  may  take  this  for  his  rule  ;  he  will  spend 
half  his  year,  the  winter,  for  example,  in  sermons  directed  to  revi- 
valistic  ends,  and  the  other  half  of  the  year  in  sermons  that  shall 
have  a  wider  range  and  bear  on  culture  and  edification.  That  is  a 
simple  path  and  numbers  there  be  that  enter  thereat. 

Thirdly,  we  can  formulate  a  complete  system  of  doctrinal 
topics,  and  take  our  people  through  a  wholesome  round  of  theology, 
year  by  year ;  that  for  Sunday  mornings.  Then  in  the  second 
services  we  can  move  more  miscellaneously ;  making  free  with 
all  subjects  the  more  freely,  because  we  have  piously  observed  our 
appointed  routine  of  the  morning  and  given  the  hearers  a  sure  loaf 
to  masticate  :  the  centre  and  substance  of  a  full  divine  meal.  That 
plan  has  one  virtue  for  certain,  namely,  it  is  a  plan.  It  makes  a 
preacher  consecutive  because  doctrines  are  consecutive ;  and  it 
tends  to  make  consecutive  Christians  in  the  pews.  The  people  are 
insensibly  methodized  under  that  treatment,  and  they  grow  to  be 
knowing  and  systematic  in  religious  truth. 

Again,  preachers  may  follow  the  recorded  career  of  the  Lord 
in  their  sermonizing ;  or  lastly,  they  may  do  what  comes  to  much 
the  same  thing  and  take  the  order  of  the  Christian  Year,  as  laid 
down  in  the  liturgies  of  the  Church  at  large.  I  run  over  these  last 
specifications  rapidly  because  I  shall  get  back  to  them  again,  and  to 
all  my  specifications,  when  I  turn  back  in  my  subject  and  consider 
the  desirability  of  these  subjective  and  objective  methods.  And  first, 
the  methods  subjective.  Let  me  give  them  a  rapid  run  through  the 
mill  once  more  and  point  out  some  of  the  chaff  and  grit  in  them. 
Take  the  doctrine:  "Just  follow  your  own  genius,"  as  the  great 
doctrine  for  preachers.  No  doubt  a  preacher  of  that  kind  will 
be  likely  to  be  full  of  flavors,  to  be  marrowy  and  real ;  and  con- 
sidered simply  as  a  galvanic  battery,  he  may  be  first-class.  But 
a  personality  formulated  on  the  principle  of  individualism,  as  his 
has  been,  is  likely  also  to  be  circumscribed,  lop-sided  and  more  or 
less  eccentric.  A  man  who  has  so  much  respect  for  his  own  interi- 
ors as  to  make  them  the  law  of  his  pulpit  subjects — the  law  of  their 
selection  and  succession — has  reached  that  advanced  stage  of 
self-respect  by  an  individualistic  course  of  education  as  distin- 
guished from  a  catholic  education.  That  is,  in  his  choice  of*books, 
lines  of  study,  methods,  teachers  and  everything  else  which  has 
gone  in  to  make  him  what  he  is,  he  has  supremely  followed  his  own 


YALE   LECTURES.  289 

genius.  In  preserving  his  own  precious  individuality  and  standing 
guard  against  influences  that  might  obliterate  or  enfeeble  it,  he  has 
kept  out  influences  that  would  have  universalized  him  and  made 
him  an  organ  with  several  hundred  pipes,  instead  of  a  solitary  and 
eccentric  bagpipe.  Now  a  bagpipe  in  the  pulpit  tends  to  make  bag- 
pipes all  around.  I  do  not  know  anybody  who  more  needs  to 
be  an  organ  than  a  preacher  of  the  Gospel.  The  Gospel  is  as 
capable  of  innumerable  tones  and  tunes  as  the  vast  atmosphere  is, 
if  only  it  can  have  a  many-piped  man  to  tone  and  tune  through  :  a 
man  who  is  an  organ  and  not  a  pipe.  I  do  not  now  dwell  on  the 
disadvantage  that  the  preacher  himself  suffers  when  he  is  a  pipe. 
No,  what  I  object  to  is  the  multiplication  of  pipes  and  pipers 
among  his  hearers  by  his  being  what  he  is.  They  take  the  fashion 
of  his  doctrinalism  and  his  spiritualism  and  his  entire  limited  cul- 
ture. As  though  a  deformed  man  should  inflict  his  type  on  the 
whole  community.  This  highly  original  preacher  whom  I  am 
deprecating,  not  only  selects  his  topics  and  their  order  by  the  law 
of  his  own  originality,  but  he  selects  his  Scriptural  lessons  for 
his  pulpit  and  his  hymns  by  the  same  law ;  and  the  prayers  in 
which  he  leads  his  congregation  are  simply  self-evolutions  once 
more ;  they  are  his  experience  and  his  circumscribed  religious 
thinking  spoken  forth,  and  the  bowed  congregation  must  conform 
themselves  to  that  unique  pattern,  or  else  not  pray  at  all.  Usually 
they  do  not  pray  at  all,  but  watch  that  interesting  evolution.  The 
danger  is  that  they  will  come  to  like  watching  it  and  to  supposing  that 
to  be  prayer,  and  to  feeling  that  prayers  which  are  catholic  rather 
than  individual  are  tame  and  formal  and  maybe  not  acceptable 
to  God. 

I  wish  I  had  time  to  illustrate  at  large  the  evil  of  following 
your  own  genius  too  much.  I  am  afraid  you  will  laugh  at  me  when 
I  tell  you  that  at  Easter  1884,  in  early  April,  I  began  to  write  and 
preach  on  the  Resurrection  of  our  Lord ;  and  on  that  theme 
and  its  branches  and  corollaries  staid,  steadfast  and  rooted  till  the 
last  Sunday  in  July — four  months — averaging  more  than  one  sermon 
a  week  on  it  and  writing  on  nothing  else.  I  presume  you  will 
charge  the  bagpipe  infirmity  on  me.  I  could  explain  and  defend 
myself  partially,  at  least,  but  I  will  not.  Rather  I  prefer  to  hasten 
on  and  say,  that  I  can  refer  you  to  scores  of  important  Creeds, 
Church  Creeds,  Creeds  of  theological  seminaries  and  denomina- 
tional Creeds,  in  which  the  Lord's  resurrection  is  not  mentioned 


290  YALE  LECTURES. 

at  all,  and  nobody  would  know  from  them  that  he  did  rise,  save  by 
inference  or  implication.  And  that  although  the  doctrine  of  the 
life  of  the  risen  Lord,  communicated  to  dead  human  souls  by  the 
Holy  Ghost,  to  make  them  alive,  is  the  doctrine  pre-eminently 
that  differences  Christianity  from  all  other  religions.  Now  is  not 
that  playing  something  less  than  full  organ  ?  Those  Creeds  are 
very  resounding  on  the  passion  of  the  Lord  and  on  some  other 
themes,  but  they  pitifully  die  away  on  that  one  event  which  is  the 
forth-flowering  of  all  preceding  events.  We  need  a  speaking  pulpit 
which  is  not  limited  by  the  private  genius  of  the  man  in  it,  a  pulpit 
that  discusses  topics  that  any  given  private  genius  might  forget,  or 
touch  too  lightly,  if  he  were  not  made  aware  of  them  and  attent 
by  the  voice  of  the  Holy  Catholic  Church ;  the  godly  wisdom 
of  the  whole  Kingdom  of  God ;  the  teaching  ages ;  the  Holy 
Ghost  in  the  ages.  The  preacher  who  goes  by  his  own  genius, 
does  not  much  hear  this  great  teaching.  He  has  picked  up  some 
things — some  great  things  probably — and  on  them  he  puts  his 
whole  weight.  They  suit  his  mind.  He  can  preach  on  them 
con  amore.  On  other  topics  he  would  be  listless.  So  he  abides  in 
these  his  specialties.  I  must  work  the  truths  that  I  can  work,  says 
he,  and  what  other  truths  there  may  be  must  be  worked  by  men 
who  are  born  to  it,  as  I  certainly  am  not.  And  his  people,  instead 
of  sitting  at  a  full  table,  sit  stinted ly  at  his ;  and  bear  the  stamp  of 
his  specialization.     So  much  for  that. 

And  now,  how  about  getting  our  sermons  by  the  direct  gift 
of  the  Holy  Ghost?  Will  that  do?  Shall  I  open  this  particular 
thought  or  text  to-day,  because  the  Holy  Ghost  operating  in  the 
secrecy  of  my  mind,  has  authentically  designated  that  subject  for 
this  day;  and  shall  I  insist  on  that  as  the  rule  of  my  selection 
always?  No.  And  why?  For  various  reasons.  To  begin  with, 
God  has  confessedly  provided  various  externals  for  the  guidance  of 
men ;  the  Bible,  for  instance ;  and  human  advice,  and  his  provi- 
dence working  on  the  large  theatre  of  history;  and  ordinances 
which  are  practical  digests  of  information ;  and  the  teaching 
Church.  I  do  not  need  to  name  all  of  them,  but  if  there  is  only 
one — just  one — the  Bible,  say — that  one  is  conclusive  to  the  point 
that  God  did  not  intend  men  should  walk  by  the  inner  light  simply. 
And  I  do  not  know  but  the  same  thing  is  indicated  quite  as  clearly 
by  the  fact  that  men  are  made  of  soul  and  body,  and  not  of 
soul  alone.     Why  am  I  clothed  upon  with  this  external  outfit  with 


YALE   LECTURES.  291 

its  several  outlooking  organs,  by  which  I  am  related  to  the  vast  and 
multifold  external  and  am  perpetually  externalized — why  all  this, 
except  as  my  Creator  wanted  me  to  lead  a  double  life,  and  be 
doubly  directed  in  all  that  I  do  :  first,  by  the  blessed  Spirit,  no 
doubt ;  but  again,  by  authorities  exterior  to  myself !  Moreover, 
why  is  it  that,  while  the  operations  of  the  Holy  Spirit  in  souls  are 
certainly  favorable  to  sanity,  sweetness  and  discretion,  the  forth- 
puttings  of  the  persons  thus  operated  upon  are  frequently  neither 
sane,  sweet  nor  discreet — why  is  this  unless  God  means  to  notify  us 
that  a  man  must  not  go  by  interiors  alone  ?  The  Apostles  and  the 
first  disciples  were  full  of  the  Holy  Ghost  and  of  power,  even 
the  power  of  the  Holy  Ghost,  as  they  needed  to  be  considering 
the  tasks  they  had  on  hand ;  but  this  fullness  of  the  Spirit  did  not 
save  them  from  error  always,  and  was  not  meant  to.  They  had 
differences  among  themselves  in  respect  of  the  things  of  the  King- 
dom, wherein  both  parties  could  not  be  right,  although  they  were 
re-born  of  the  Holy  Ghost.  Mary,  the  blessed  Virgin,  was  much 
inspired  when  she  improvised  the  Magnificat ;  so  was  Zacharias 
when  he  chanted  his  Benedictus  ;  but  both  of  those  God-given 
hymns  are  strictly  nationalistic  rather  than  universalistic  and 
Christian,  and  it  took  quite  a  long  time  to  get  even  the  Apostles  out 
of  a  nationalistic  conception  of  the  Kingdom  of  Jesus  Christ.  It 
is  difficult  to  speak  of  all  this  without  seeming  to  disrespect  the 
Spirit  of  illumination,  the  light  of  God  in  the  mind  ;  but  we  must 
speak  of  it,  otherwise  men  all  about  will  be  undertaking  to  go 
by  the  Spirit  of  God  and  nothing  else.  Evidently  the  Spirit  does 
not  wish  any  such  thing.  He  enters  them  and  then  yields  to  their 
ignorance  and  persistency  and  lets  them  blunder.  A  ship  all  sail 
capsizes.  Sails  and  good  gales  are  good,  but  ballast  is  good  too. 
And  when  God's  gales  are  on  us,  the  gales  of  his  Spirit  in  the  mind, 
we  must  steady  ourselves  by  the  ballast  of  authority  and  by  the 
wisdom  of  that  same  Holy  Ghost  embodied  in  the  Book,  in 
Christian  history,  and  in  Christian  institutions,  notably  the  Church. 
The  secret  of  equilibrium  lies  in  a  due  balance  of  the  outward  and 
the  inward. 

You  see  now,  my  young  Brethren,  why  I  cannot  advise  you  to 
get  your  sermons  from  Sunday  to  Sunday  by  any  merely  subjective 
law  of  choice.  Well  then,  how  shall  you  get  them?  They  must 
come  somehow,  for  the  Sundays  come  and  the  congregations  come 
together.     If  the  ministers  were  all  Joshuas,  every  now  and  then 


292  YALE   LECTURES. 

some  sore-pressed  soul  of  them  would  be  halting  the  sun,  stopping 
the  Sundays  and  taking  a  rest  in  his  subjects  ;  but  the  Joshuas  are 
all  dead  and  gone  ;  and  no  preacher  ever  escaped  the  next  Sunday. 
Brethren,  I  do  not  think  we  need  to  escape  it.  Subjects  are  as 
numerous  as  Sundays  are.  And  while  I  would  not  lay  down  a  too 
strict  and  iron  rule  for  getting  subjects,  and  locating  them,  one 
on  this  Sunday,  and  the  other  on  that ;  I  have  slowly  settled  to  the 
idea  that,  for  an  outline  of  our  march  through  the  year,  nothing 
is  better  on  the  whole,  perhaps,  than  the  life  of  the  Lord  chrono- 
logically followed ;  as  it  is  followed,  indeed,  in  the  Christian  Year 
laid  down  by  those  Christian  bodies  which  give  attention  to  such 
things.  At  any  rate  that  may  do  for  one  outline.  The  life  of  the 
blessed  Lord,  I  say,  beginning  with  the  Advent  and  ending  with  the 
Ascension ;  and  yet  not  ending  there,  for  his  invisible  career  is 
a  part  of  his  human  career  as  truly  as  his  birth  was.  The  Man 
Christ  Jesus,  that  veritable  man,  in  his  humanity  intact  and  undi- 
minished, has  gone  up  to  the  right  hand  of  God,  has  sent  forth 
thence  the  Holy  Spirit,  and  now  waits  till  his  enemies  be  made  his 
footstool  by  that  Mighty  Spirit  !  In  even  just  mentioning  this  out- 
line for  sermonizing,  I  feel  my  heart  caught  in  the  warmth  of  it  and 
made  glad. 

The  first  advantage  secured  by  such  a  course  of  preaching 
is,  that  it  sweeps  the  entire  circle  of  Christian  truth,  and  does 
not  leave  the  minister  and  his  people  exposed  to  the  perils  of  a 
partial  and  unbalanced  cultivation.  A  man  who  had  never  exam- 
ined the  subject  might  say,  and  would  be  likely  to  say,  that  a 
following  of  the  life  of  Jesus  in  our  sermonizing  must  result  in  less 
breadth  and  less  variety  than  some  other  plans  :  the  plan  of  a 
doctrinal  curriculum,  for  instance.  Are  there  not  large  parts  of 
Holy  Writ  that  do  not  get  treated  by  us  in  our  pulpits  provided  we 
simply  run  the  round  of  the  Christian  Year ;  such  as  the  civil  legisla- 
tion of  Moses,  and  many  a  report  of  battles,  and  numerous  touches 
of  personal  portraiture,  and  a  great  many  religious  hymns  in  the 
Psalms  and  elsewhere  which  have  not  the  remotest  reference  to 
Christ ;  and  any  amount  of  national  history  too  in  the  Old  Testa- 
ment? I  reply,  of  course,  the  Bible  in  its  entirety,  and  not  in 
selected  parts  is  our  text  book.  We  must  be  careful  on  that  point. 
The  whole  educated  world  has  come  out  of  the  notion  that  all  parts 
of  the  Book  are  equally  profitable  to  be  preached  upon,  so  that 
a  minister  must  take  for  his  topic   Paul  sending  for  his  cloak  to 


YALE  LECTURES.  293 

Troas,  as  often  as  he  takes  the  sending  of  the  Holy  Ghost,  and  so 
often  as  he  preaches  on  the  cloak  must  be  just  as  enthusiastic  as 
though  the  Holy  Ghost  were  his  theme.  Nevertheless,  the  whole 
Bible,  cloak  and  all,  is  to  be  turned  in  and  utilized  when  we  speak ; 
and  if  it  cannot  be  utilized  on  the  Christian  Year  plan,  then  that 
plan  is  conclusively  exploded.     But  consider  now  the  following. 

A  loving  student  of  Christ  and  his  career  will  find  himself 
carried,  by  that  study,  into  an  amazingly  large  fraction  of  this 
volume  : — carried  by  a  movement  direct  and  inevitable.  The  most 
unpromising  portion  in  which  to  find  him  is  the  Old  Testament, 
but  the  moment  we  accept  the  Old  Testament  record  as  organically 
one  with  the  new,  and  admit  that  the  day  of  the  Messiah  was 
preluded  and  introduced  by  a  gigantic  preamble,  a  long-continued 
toil  of  miscellaneous  forces  which  were  systematized  and  made  co- 
efficient by  the  blessed  purpose  of  God  running  through  the  whole 
thing,  and  converging  the  whole  to  the  Advent ;  and  admit  further 
that  the  Old  Testament  is  our  authentic  history  of  all  that ;  we  have 
implicitly  declared  the  presence  of  Jesus  in  innumerable  places  in 
the  old  record.  He  was  the  outcome  of  the  ages  and  to  interpret 
him  we  must  search  those  ages.  And  while  we  shall  find  him  very 
obviously  manifested  in  numerous  events,  personages,  institutions, 
prophecies,  and  allusions  back  there,  we  shall  as  truly  find  him  in 
still  more  places  :  Psalms,  histories,  sentences,  incidental  utterances, 
and  what  not,  wherein  no  mortal  at  the  time  suspected  any  other 
meaning  than  that  meaning  constrained  by  their  time  and  locality. 
If  God  chooses  to  elaborate  a  terminology  full  of  present  signifi- 
cances and  then  thousands  of  years  thereafter,  in  the  providential 
unfolding  of  events,  makes  that  old  terminology  carry  vastly 
expanded  significations,  which  significations  it  is  now  plain  enough 
that  terminology  was  designed  to  carry,  if  God  pleases  to  take  that 
way  of  gradualism,  and  would  not  have  his  Old  Testament  speak 
forth  all  its  contents  till  the  fullness  of  time  ;  who  are  we  that  we 
should  undertake  to  criticize  him ;  and  why  may  we  not  better 
thank  him  that  we  are  privileged  to  explore  a  Book  so  germinant 
and  phenomenal? 

And  so  the  New  Testament.  If  Christ  and  his  life  is  our 
appointed  circle  of  topics,  to  be  sure  we  must  resort  primarily 
to  the  histories  of  him  given  by  the  four  Evangelists ;  but  hardly 
more  to  them  than  to  the  Epistles,  those  inspired  expositions  of  the 
very  things  we  are  after  concerning  the  Lord.     If  I  am  speaking  on 


294  YALE   LECTURES. 

the  birth  of  Christ  or  his  circumcision,  or  his  baptism  or  his  temp- 
tation or  his  transfiguration,  or  his  death  or  his  resurrection  or  his 
ascension,  or  on  any  scene  in  his  life  or  any  slightest  word  that  ever 
fell  from  his  lips,  my  experience  is  that  the  whole  volume  begins  to 
swarm  about  me ;  not  every  passage  of  the  whole,  perhaps,  but 
there  is  such  a  swarming  that  I  feel  as  though  every  and  each  were 
swarming,  precisely  as  the  Samaritan  woman  said,  "Come,  see  a 
man  that  told  me  all  that  ever  I  did,"  because  Jesus  had  told  her  so 
much  in  the  few  words  he  did  say,  that  she  was  sure  of  his  ability  to 
tell  more,  and  felt  that  already  her  entire  secret  consciousness  had 
been  opened  out.  If  you  press  me  hard,  and  ask  me  at  what  point 
in  the  Christian  Year  I  am  accustomed  to  bring  in  Paul's  cloak, 
I  answer,  I  bring  it  in  when  I  bring  in  the  man  that  wore  the  cloak. 
And  if  you  ask  me  where  I  bring  him  in,  I  answer,  I  can  bring  him 
in  wherever  his  life  connects  with  Christ's  life,  or  even  with  the 
Kingdom  of  Christ.  It  is  not  straining  matters  much  if  when 
speaking  of  Christ,  I  speak  of  one  of  his  Apostles,  especially  such 
a  sizable  and  interesting  Apostle  as  St.  Paul.  Moreover,  how  that 
little  accident  of  sending  for  the  cloak  helps  light  up  the  whole 
early  situation,  the  exact  situation  wherein  both  Christ  and  all  his 
friends  found  themselves.  The  truth  is,  we  depend  on  trivial  inci- 
dents for  a  large  part  of  our  information  whereon  to  build  an  histori- 
cal and  realistic  conception  of  the  day  of  Jesus  and  his  co-laborers. 

I  should  say  here,  that  if  there  are  some  parts  of  the  Scriptures 
that  cannot  be  directly  connected  with  a  life-long  round  and  round 
of  Christ-sermons,  as  perhaps  there  are,  those  parts  can  certainly 
be  drawn  upon  and  made  of  use  in  the  way  of  illustration  and 
enrichment  for  the  Christ-sermons — and  I  suppose  it  was  one  of  the 
special  designs  of  God  in  getting  the  Book  written,  to  have  it  used 
in  that  way.  A  preacher  with  eyes  on  all  sides  of  his  mind,  may 
and  will  use  material  collected  from  the  whole  breadth  of  created 
things  and  human  life  ;  but  his  pre-eminent  storehouse  is  the  Bible. 
The  Bible  has  more  contents  than  any  other  book.  And  it  has 
more  of  God  in  it.  And  it  was  more  intended  for  moral  and  relig- 
ious use  therefore  and  for  homiletical  material. 

I  said  to  you  at  the  beginning  that  in  laying  down  the  circuit 
of  the  Christian  Year  as  one  of  the  most  serviceable  of  circuits  for 
the  preacher  to  follow,  I  did  not  mean  to  be  more  than  cast-iron  on 
the  subject,  and  I  therefore  desire  here  to  slip  in  the  suggestion, 
that  if  only  we  traverse  that  circuit  in  one  thorough-going  discourse 


YALE   LECTURES.  295 

each  Sunday,  we  have  fulfilled  all  righteousness  perhaps,  and  made 
sure  of  a  roundabout  education  and  indoctrination  for  our  people  ; 
and  on  the  numerous  other  occasions  when  we  are  called  to  speak, 
may  spread  abroad  upon  such  topics  as  do  not  come  into  a  follow- 
ing of  the  life  of  Jesus — if  any  such  there  be.  I  doubt  whether 
there  are.  I  wish  this  body  of  students  would  appoint  a  committee 
to  hunt  for  some  and  let  me  have  the  list  they  make  out  and  see 
what  I  think  of  it.  If  I  cannot  find  a  scene  in  the  life  of  Jesus,  or 
some  sentence  that  he  spoke,  or  something  else  directly  connected 
with  him,  that  will  make  a  natural  text  whereon  to  unfold  every 
object  on  that  list  of  yours,  young  Gentlemen,  then  I  will  give  up 
the  case.  But  supposing  I  cannot.  Suppose  there  are  numbers 
and  numbers  of  good,  preachable  subjects  that  do  not  easily  get 
into  the  cycle  of  the  Christian  Year.  I  should  say  march  through 
the  Christian  Year,  that  for  one  thing ;  make  sure  of  that — and 
then  right  along  parallel  to  that  substantial  movement,  just  march  a 
more  miscellaneous  and  unforeordained  movement,  skirmish-work, 
Zouave-fighting,  hitting  things  as  they  fly :  such  as  the  last  earth- 
quake, Paul's  cloak,  politics,  dress,  the  theater,  the  social  evil, 
Ecclesiasticism,  the  advantages  of  celibacy  on  the  part  of  the  more 
poverty-stricken  and  roaming  of  the  clergy,  anything  you  please ; 
only,  my  Brethren,  you  will  always  notice  that  the  Christian  Year 
kind  of  preachers  never  want  to  discourse  on  equivocal  or  unper- 
missible  themes.  Their  constant  companionship  with  the  Lord  in 
the  round  of  his  life  disciplines  their  taste  and  sharpens  their 
hunger  for  themes  full  of  Gospel  fatness  and  gusto,  themes  that  are 
not  scrappy  and  remote  and  queer. 

At  the  same  time  they  will  not  be  narrowed  and  made  monoto- 
nous by  this  companionship  with  the  Master,  in  their  prescribed 
round  of  discoursings.  When  Dr.  Horace  Bushnell  had  served  his 
people  twenty-five  years,  he  preached  a  sermon  to  them,  afterwards 
printed,  in  which  he  said  that  some  of  them  had  complained  that 
he  preached  Christ  too  much  and  did  not  range  through  as  large  a 
diversity  as  a  preacher  reasonably  might.  He  defended  himself  a 
little,  but  I  presume  they  were  right.  At  least  they  had  an  idea 
which  they  were  feeling  after.  Never  did  there  live  a  more  versa- 
tile man  than  he,  in  the  constitution  of  his  mind ;  he  was  wonder- 
ful in  that  regard  ;  but  for  various  reasons,  the  heavy  attacks  made 
upon  his  orthodoxy  among  the  rest,  he  had  labored  supremely  upon 
certain  aspects  of   truth  and  had  partially  retired  other  aspects. 


296  YALE   LECTURES. 

Some  subjects  he  not  merely  did  not  discuss,  but  took  no 
interest  in ;  important  subjects,  too.  Various  things  that  quite 
fascinated  a  ritualist,  he  simply  despised  as  topics  for  a  strong  man 
to  consider.  The  continuing  and  undiminished  manhood  of  the 
ascended  Lord,  he  esteemed  a  small  matter,  apparently.  The  vari- 
ous questions  that  center  in  the  atonement  enthused  him  mightily 
and  pervaded  his  sermonizing  to  any  extent  for  a  long  time  ;  but  it 
would  have  been  better  had  he  widened  his  sweep  by  something 
like  this  on  which  I  am  this  day  insisting :  a  selection  of  his 
themes  of  discourse,  not  by  the  accident  that  his  theological  stand- 
ing at  certain  points  had  been  impugned,  nor  by  the  accident  that 
he  had  become  a  Congregational  minister ;  nor  by  that  primary  and 
fundamental  accident,  his  being  born  with  an  Olympian  head  and 
with  steam  on  from  the  first,  so  that  he  could  create  full-veined 
subjects  for  himself,  as  the  profuse  prairie  creates  flowers — in  no 
such  ways  as  these  could  a  man  like  him,  or  any  other  man,  in 
truth,  be  widened  to  his  utmost  and  made  all-including  in  respect  of 
topics  :  but  rather  by  some  external,  authorized  curriculum,  put 
upon  him  as  a  bondage  at  first,  if  need  be.  It  does  not  hurt  these 
giants  to  harness  them  and  make  their  huge  strength  move  along 
roads  that  former  generations  have  laid  out ;  it  is  interesting  to  see 
them  canter  across  the  open  fields  and  disport  themselves  in  simple 
exuberance ;  and  it  makes  the  rest  of  us  proud  that  one  of  us  is 
thus  exuberant  and  gigantic — but  when  you  come  to  solid  use — or 
to  the  greatest  solid  use — why  let  us  have  them  harnessed  ;  har- 
nessed into  some  objective  round  ;  the  Christian  Year,  for  example, 
or  even  into  some  of  the  other  objective  systems  which  I  have 
named  ;  the  yearly  course  of  doctrinal  sermonizing  for  one. 

I  do  not  mention  Bushnell  as  a  pre-eminent  sinner  in  the 
respect  named,  neither  have  I  the  heart  to  emphasize  against  him 
anyway.  He  is  only  one  of  hundreds  of  us.  I  myself  am  one  of 
this  wicked  class  naturally.  Some  subjects  I  like  and  some  I  dis- 
like ;  and  if  I  do  not  keep  watch,  I  preach  all  the  time  on  the 
former.  And  I  select  Scriptures  to  read  to  my  people  that  I  like, 
and  do  not  at  first  see,  perhaps,  what  some  parts  of  the  Bible  were 
written  for  at  all.  Of  course,  my  pious  intention  is  to  preach  on 
everything  that  deserves  it ;  and  to  do  it  proportionately  ;  dwelling 
on  the  uplifted  Cross  more  than  I  do  on  the  Roman  soldiers  at  the 
foot  of  it ;  but  I  am  like  the  converted  Indian  who  was  put  to  trial 
before  a  police  court  for  whipping  his  wife.     "  I  forgot,"  said  the 


YALE   LECTURES.  297 

poor  fellow ;  and  when  I  as  a  preacher  come  to  look  back  over  any 
year  of  my  preaching,  or  over  a  stretch  of  years,  I  notice  that  I 
"forgot"  all  along  and  followed  my  nature  too  much,  rather  than 
my  solemn  good  principles  in  the  matter. 

Many  of  us  are  carried  away  by  the  special  rages  of  the  period 
in  which  we  live,  or  of  the  nation  to  which  we  belong,  or  of  our 
denomination  or  of  the  local  community  where  our  home  is  :  and 
we  preach  more  than  we  ought  on  those  rages  :  on  the  rights  of 
man  more  than  on  his  obligations,  (how  natural  that  is  in  an  Ameri- 
can !),  on  individualism  more  than  on  solidarity,  (how  natural  that 
for  a  Congregationalist  ! ) ,  on  Church  organization,  apostolical  suc- 
cession and  the  force  of  sacraments,  more  than  on  doctrine  and 
life  (how  natural  that  for  a  ritualist !),  on  the  love  of  God  more 
than  on  his  holy  rigor  (how  natural  that  in  this  day!),  on  sins 
against  the  social  state,  like  theft,  lying  and  adultery,  more  than  on 
the  sins  that  are  purely  spiritual  and  an  injury  against  God. 

Now  as  a  corrective  of  all  over:specialization,  all  disproportion, 
all  narrowness,  all  provincialism,  denominationalism  or  localism, 
all  private  personal  impulses,  in  preaching ;  I  present  the  Christian 
Year  and  praise  it ;  and  if  I  cannot  have  that,  then  I  want  some 
similar  thing ;  some  contrivance  which  represents,  not  the  extem- 
poraneous wisdom  of  some  single  John  Smith,  however  intelligent 
or  inspired,  but  the  aggregate  wisdom  of  all  the  Smiths  ever  born, 
if  we  can  get  at  it ;  a  wisdom  that  is  the  aggregate  of  something ; 
of  a.  synod  or  a  general  Conference  or  a  Caucus  of  Presiding 
Elders — anything  to 'get  ahead  of  Smith.  Not  that  I  would  be  so 
uncongregational  as  to  want  a  bondage  provided  for  Smith,  but  I 
would  like  something  set  up  for  him  to  look  at  and  turn  over  in  his 
mind,  and  perchance  freely  choose  ;  something  portentous  enough 
to  make  it  a  conceivable  thing  that  he  should  choose  it  and  go  by  it, 
by  and  by  and  when  he  has  looked  long  enough ;  if  not  implicitly 
then  approximately  or  by  fits  and  starts ;  so  that  his  listening  con- 
gregation shall  notice  every  now  and  then  that  he  is  in  the  throes  of 
something  foreign  to  himself — that  is,  something  that  he  did  not 
altogether  originate  himself. 

Again,  if  you  as  a  preacher  distribute  your  emphasis  upon  a 
large  and  various  list  of  subjects,  as  you  will  if  you  follow  the  plan 
I  have  been  speaking  of,  you  will  save  yourself  and  your  people 
from  all  unwholesome  religious  excitements.  Yes,  and  from  all 
revivals,  some  man  speaks  up  and  says.  Yes  sir,  that  is  so ;  from 
20 


298  YALE  LECTURES. 

revivals  that  depend  on  an  exclusive,  prolonged,  persistent  presen- 
tation of  two  or  three  doctrines.  And  in  my  judgment  that  is  not 
one  of  the  least  of  the  uses  of  the  Christian  Year.  It  does  not 
forestall  all  fluctuations  of  feeling.  It  does  not  prevent  seasons  of 
special  feeling,  real  swells,  in  fact,  as  at  Advent  or  Easter-tide 
or  Passion  Week  or  Lent.  I  do  not  understand  that  God  wants 
the  fixity  of  the  solid  plain  in  the  ongo  of  the  inward  life  of  men, 
but  rather  the  beautiful  mobility  of  the  sea.  But  the  mobile  sea 
needs  steadying,  somehow,  does  it  not?  Mere  mobility,  mobility 
unharnessed,  mobility  uncontrolled  by  any  objectives  whatever,  that 
certainly  is  not  best.  Standing  as  I  do  among  a  kind  of  creatures, 
namely,  human  creatures,  who  are  three  times  too  dead  in  spiritual 
matters,  I  have  never  felt  called  upon  to  make  all  the  ado  I  could 
against  what  has  come  to  be  known  as  revivalism ;  but  if  anybody 
asks  me  my  cool  opinion  on  the  subject — my  opinion  on  the  whole 
— if  he  will  bear  with  me,  I  am  willing  to  say  that  all  the  revivalism 
that  is  really  wholesome  in  the  long  pull,  and  will  add  up  large  in 
the  day  of  Judgment,  can  be  secured  and  naturally  is  secured  in 
that  annual  circuit  of  preaching  which  I  am  trying  to  glorify  this 
day ;  and  that  one  of  the  reasons  why  I  glorify  that  scheme  is,  that 
it  is  sure  death  to  certain  styles  of  revivalism — to  those  styles,  I 
mean,  which  are  begotten  of  whole  winters  of  direct  bombardment 
on  the  consciences  of  men,  in  the  use  of  a  certain  few  missiles 
of  terror  and  the  like.  Perish  the  thought  that  these  missiles  are  in 
any  wise  unscriptural,  but  perish  the  thought  also  that  these  volum- 
inous Scriptures  of  ours  and  the  truths  they  contain,  enjoy  being 
retired  for  months  at  a  time,  while  a  limited  selection  therefrom  is 
made  and  trundled  to  the  front  and  opened  in  a  special  cannonade. 
Years  ago,  I  was  calling  on  the  late  Rev.  Dr.  Jonathan  Brace 
and  he,  happening  to  be  in  a  reminiscent  mood,  said  to  me  : 
"  Thirty-seven  years  ago  this  very  week,  Dr.  Hawes  took  me  in  his 
carriage,  drove  me  over  from  Hartford  to  Litchfield  and  preached 
my  ordination  and  installation  sermon.  It  was  in  the  time  of 
the  theological  controversy  over  Dr.  Bushnell.  On  the  way  I  said 
to  Dr.  Hawes  :  '  Do  you  know,  Doctor,  what  Dr.  Bushnell  says 
about  your  preaching?'  "Why  no."  :He  says  that  you  have  but 
three  topics,  Death,  Judgment  and  Eternity.'  Hawes  dropped  his 
lines  and  said  solemnly,  '  Could  a  man  have  three  more  important 
topics,  Brother  Brace?'  "  Those  of  you  who  knew  those  two  emi- 
nent men,  and  how  powerfully  they  were  differentiated  from  each 


YALE   LECTURES.  299 

other,  will  see  the  points  of  relish  in  that  anecdote ;  but  I  intro- 
duce it  here  for  the  purpose  of  saying  :  Three  topics  are  not 
enough.  They  may  be  enough  for  one  day,  but  they  are  not  enough 
for  three  hundred  and  sixty-five.  They  are  enough  to  make  an  ex- 
citement with,  as  one  hurricane  is  enough  to  tumble  up  all  the 
waters  of  the  globe  ;  but  the  waters  of  the  globe  do  not  need  to  be 
tumbled  up  in  that  way.  There  are  a  good  many  forces  where- 
with to  operate  upon  the  waters  ;  forces  uneccentric  and  serene, 
forces  that  leave  the  oceans  so  that  we  can  navigate  them  and  not 
be  drowned,  all  of  us  : — the  sweet  moral  suasion  of  the  moon, 
and  the  complex  swing  of  the  moving  earth.  There  is  no  danger 
of  stagnation  if  the  whole  roistering  brood  of  hurricanes  stay 
away  forever.  Let  them  stay  away,  I  say.  Just  carefully  follow  the 
Lord  and  have  your  meditations  rise  and  fall  with  the  fluctuations 
of  his  life  and  teachings,  and  you  will  have  all  the  vicissitudes  that 
are  good  for  you.  When  I  come  along  into  the  Spring  and  keep 
step  with  the  events  of  Passion  Week,  I  find  myself  submerged  in 
as  much  emotionalism  as  I  can  comfortably  carry.  The  whole  air 
about  me  seems  to  be  in  a  swoon  sometimes  under  the  stress  and 
suffusion  of  the  great  themes  of  the  season.  And  I  am  left  in  that 
suffusion  just  so  long  as  is  healthful  for  me,  and  then  Easter  pulls 
me  out  of  it  into  another  suffusion ;  and  yet  the  beauty  of  it  is 
that  that  other  is  not  another,  as  being  contradictory  to  the  first, 
but  another  as  purple  is  something  other  than  red,  being  red  plus 
blue.  The  red  is  all  saved  and  the  blue  is  super-added.  Blessed  is 
that  scheme  of  holy  culture  in  which  each  stage  melts  into  the  next, 
like  a  tributary  into  its  river,  swallowed  up  but  not  lost. 

Thus  much  on  the  tranquillity  breathed  into  us  by  the  Christian 
Year.  Our  whole  emphasis  is  not  heaped  up  on  three  heads ; 
whether  Death,  Judgment  and  Eternity,  or  some  other  equally 
solemn  three.  All  the  mental  over-heat  ever  heard  of  was  caused 
by  inordinate  concentration  on  one  or  a  few  thoughts  ;  and  the 
only  remedy  for  over-heat  is  counter-irritants  or  heat  started  up  at 
other  points.  Warm  a  man  up  on  a  whole  cycle  of  themes  and  he 
will  never  run  wild  on  one.  Wheel  him  through  the  Christian 
Year  and  he  will  be  sane  and  peaceful,  though  not  torpid,  the  whole 
year  through.  And  what  better  can  you  have  than  that :  peaceful 
but  not  torpid  ! 

The  only  other  advantage  of  that  scheme  of  pulpit  topics  of 
which  I  have  been  speaking,  that  I  will  ask  you  to  consider  to-day, 


300  YALE   LECTURES. 

is  that  it  will  make  your  preaching  concrete  and  factual,  rather  than 
abstract,  philosophical  and  remote  from  the  thinking  of  the  average 
listener.  I  think  pretty  well  of  a  doctrinal  syllabus  along  which  to 
conduct  our  people  year  by  year,  if  we  cannot  have  anything  better  ; 
as  the  preachers  of  the  Reformed  Dutch  Church  are  ecclesiastically 
required  to  get  through  the  Heidelberg  Catechism  once  in  so  long. 
But  there  is  something  better.  It  is  one  of  the  perils  of  that  plan, 
the  plan  doctrinal,  that  it  tends  to  take  the  minister  off  into  intel- 
lectualizing  in  philosophical  theology ;  dropping  the  personal  ele- 
ment, the  Lord  Jesus,  considerably,  and  losing  thus  an  immense 
advantage.  My  Brethren,  most  of  us  who  are  brainy  and  investiga- 
tory, incline  to  cease  from  tangibilities  and  expatiate  in  the  intan- 
gible. We  like  to  manipulate  propositions  better  than  we  like  to 
manipulate  things.  We  are  afraid  of  color  and  the  flash  of  imagery 
and  the  beguilements  of  physical  analogy  in  our  diction.  If  we 
could  only  get  a  terminology  as  colorless  as  that  of  the  algebraist, 
and  swing  along  in  his  absolute  exactitudes,  when  we  speak,  we 
should  be  happy.  But  nobody  else  would  be  happy,  save  some 
tenth  man  out  in  the  pew,  the  algebraist  himself  perhaps,  sitting 
there  to  see  how  near  we  come  to  a  scientific  demonstration  in 
what  we  say.  Is  there  much  passion  or  much  that  smacks  of  the 
ground  in  mathematic  symbols?  No,  you  will  say,  neither  do  those 
cold  terms  suggest  any  living  person.  They  not  merely  suggest  no 
person,  but  they  do  not  seem  to  have  been  devised  or  invented  by 
any  person,  human  or  other.  All  such  flavors  as  that  are  purged 
out  somehow.  But  preachers  want  to  suggest  a  person,  such  should 
be  their  wish.  They  want  a  vocabulary  that  is  full  of  the  taste 
of  the  ground,  of  affairs,  of  things,  of  visibilities,  of  life.  We  had 
better  have  a  fairly  spectacular  vocabulary,  than  to  pale  away  into 
x,  y,  z,  and  trade  in  them.  Neither  do  we  want  the  square-cut 
exactitudes  for  which  those  terms  stand.  Our  subjects  all  widen 
away  into  the  indefinite  and  their  border-lines  are  wavering  lines — 
wavering  and  misty.  We  are  to  deal  in  concretes,  to  be  sure, 
things  that  a  man  can  get  his  grip  upon;  but  large  concretes, 
so  large  as  to  be  nebulous  on  their  remote  circumference. 

Well,  how  likely  is  all  this  to  be  accomplished  on  the  syllabus 
principle?  An  annual  course  of  doctrinalizing?  After  I  had  grad- 
uated from  college,  and  had  gone  so  far  into  theology  as  to  intend  to 
study  it  in  a  few  months  and  was  therefore  a  rather  advanced  and 
capable  person  as  compared  to  the  average  of  any  miscellaneous 


YALE  LECTURES.  301 

congregation,  and  supposed  that  I  knew  a  good  sermon  when  I 
saw  it,  I  chanced  to  hear  a  discourse  on  Election,  by  one  of  the 
ponderous  and  admirable  Princeton  Alexanders.  It  was  in  a 
Presbyterian  Church  in  Newark,  New  Jersey,  that  I  heard  it,  before 
the  customary  congregation  of  that  Church,  and  on  an  unspecial 
Sunday.  And  it  made  a  dint  on  me  that  is  a  dint  on  me  yet.  Not 
on  account  of  the  truth  conveyed  by  it,  but  rather  because  of  the 
supreme  ability  of  Dr.  Alexander,  then  manifested,  to  shy  the  audi- 
ence he  was  addressing  and  have  the  subject  all  to  himself.  He 
was  clear,  O  !  yes,  he  was  clear.  And  he  was  acute.  And  there 
was  not  an  ounce  of  padding  in  the  whole  long  discourse.  And 
there  was  not  one  person  of  all  his  hearers  who  could  have  begun  to 
make  such  a  solid,  killing  essay  as  that.  But  the  language  was 
sternly  intellectual  and  scientific  and  purged  of  all  warmth ;  an 
elaboration  from  out  of  the  cloister  and  not  from  out  of  any  place 
that  the  mass  of  his  amazed  hearers  had  ever  been  in.  And 
the  thought  was  closely  consecutive.  If  you  stopped  to  wink  you 
lost  something.  Everybody  seemed  to  know  as  much  as  that.  So 
nobody  did  wink  ;  though  as  I  looked  about  on  the  faces  to  see 
how  they  were  all  getting  on,  I  noticed  that  they  seemed  to  be 
about  where  I  was ;  in  a  dulled-down  and  humiliated  way,  as 
though  they  wanted  to  wink  a  good  deal. 

Now  no  sermon  like  that  was  ever  preached  by  a  Christian 
Year  man  to  an  ordinary  and  unselected  assembly.  His  manner  of 
getting  his  topics  has  externalized  him  and  dragged  him  away,  dic- 
tion and  all,  from  scholastic  methods  of  dealing  with  his  congrega- 
tion. He  may  be  dull  enough  by  force  of  having  been  born  dull, 
and  limited  and  sealed  up,  but  so  far  as  his  training  in  topics  is 
concerned,  it  has  tended  all  to  carry  him  near  to  the  apprehension 
of  the  people.  I  am  not  getting  this  point  out  as  I  meant  to,  but 
it  has  some  value  if  only  it  could  be  got  at.  I  have  great  respect 
for  intellectually  able  preachers,  powerful  theologians,  redoubtable 
essayists,  stalwart  Alexanders  and  all  the  rest.  It  would  be  a 
pitiable  thing  if  the  Christian  Church  did  not  produce  such ;  they 
have  their  place  and  function.  But  preaching  is  not  essaying  nor 
theologizing  nor  philosophizing,  but  a  dealing  with  men,  women  and 
children,  in  mass  and  unassorted,  for  their  salvation.  Wherefore, 
our  instrument  must  be  their  vernacular  for  substance,  the  English 
language  in  its  most  living  and  picturesque  forms ;  the  English 
language  perpetually  freshened  by  the  speaker,  in  that  he  uses  it 


302  YALE  LECTURES. 

with  a  thorough-going  sense  himself  of  the  precise,  live  contents  of 
its  swarming  forms,  a  sense  of  their  radical  contents  as  reaching 
back  to  a  physical  base,  a  sense  of  their  acquired  contents,  acquired 
by  ages  of  use,  and  a  sense  of  what  I  will  call  their  homely  contents, 
derived  from  human  life  in  its  homely  average. 

And  our  materials  of  discourse  must  be  not  merely  real 
entities ;  simple,  abstract,  thoughts  are  that :  but  entities  vigor- 
ously externalized  and  made  to  seem  like  facts  :  after  the  manner 
of  the  Bible,  which  continually  clothes  the  unseen  in  the  drapery  of 
the  visible.  Hell,  for  example,  is  a  well-known,  deep  valley  and 
revolting  catch-all,  where  the  fire  never  goes  out.  And  if  Jesus  had 
some  spiritual  truth  to  convey,  he  wrapped  it  up  in  a  familiar  inci- 
dent or  bit  of  common  experience  ;  or  he  pointed  with  his  finger  to 
something  then  and  there  present.  No  Alexandrine  monograph  on 
election  from  him  ever.  Many  of  his  hearers  thought  he  was 
ridiculously  simple,  I  dare  say,  or  at  least  did  not  fathom  the 
profundity  of  his  simplicities — and  many  of  us,  when  we  were 
younger,  have  failed  in  the  same  way.  But  now  it  is  coming  to  us 
that  there  is  no  teacher  like  him  for  massiveness  and  reach ;  and 
that  no  man,  however  philosophical,  theological,  solid  and  able, 
need  feel  himself  circumscribed  or  let  down  from  his  intellectual 
and  scholarly  dignity,  if  he  formulates  the  riches  of  his  mind 
in  terms  that  are  concrete  and  unrarefied  earth-growths  and  growths 
from  daily  life. 

Now,  my  dear  young  Brethren,  I  have  made  a  long  labor,  and 
whether  it  is  a  mouse  that  you  have  from  it  all,  judge  ye.  I  am 
certain  though  that  it  is  something  more  than  a  mouse,  provided  it 
serves  to  wake  you  to  the  serviceableness  of  some  sort  of  plan  in 
your  preaching ;  that,  as  distinguished  from  planless  on-goings.  I 
have  no  undue  attachment  to  the  scheme  I  have  been  eulogizing ;  I 
hope  I  have  not.  I  like  it  pretty  well,  but  you  can  do  a  good  deal 
with  other  schemes.  My  particular  enthusiasm  is,  I  say,  that  you 
get  some  objective  order  by  which  to  march,  and  be  not  left  a  prey 
to  your  own  spontaneity,  or  left  to  skew  this  way  and  that  by  the 
touch  and  touch  of  accident :  like  a  boat  adrift  on  a  river,  which 
bumps  now  one  bank  and  then  the  other,  and  gets  its  devious 
course  in  that  unbeautiful  way.  The  people  in  that  boat  keep 
moving  and  see  a  good  deal  of  landscape  first  and  last ;  but  it 
must  be  a  deal  confusing  to  take  their  landscape  thus,  at  all  sorts  of 
obliques ;    sometimes  head  on  to  it  and  sometimes  backing  up. 


YALE  LECTURES.  303 

When  they  come  to  make  a  map  of  it,  by  and  by,  it  will  puzzle 
them,  I  fancy.  Of  course,  when  you  set  yourself  to  study  plans, 
you  will  see  that  there  is  a  choice  between  them  and  some  of  them 
you  will  reject.  And  when  you  have  selected  the  best  one,  as 
nearly  as  you  can  get  at  it,  and  are  fairly  in  the  midst  thereof,  per- 
haps you  will  find  it  useful  to  season  it  with  touches  of  admixture 
from  other  plans.  When  you  are  in  the  movement  of  the  Christian 
Year,  should  you  settle  on  that,  you  must  not  fail  to  let  into  yourself 
the  Inner  Light,  the  Holy  Ghost :  partly  because,  on  almost  any 
Sunday  of  the  Christian  Year,  any  one  of  several  subjects  may 
be  germane  to  that  day,  and  the  blessed  Spirit  may  assist  you  to 
just  the  one  of  the  several ;  and  secondly,  if  the  particular  subject 
for  the  day  is  given  you  by  your  chosen  curriculum,  the  Holy 
Spirit  is  infinitely  able  to  warm  up  your  subject  for  you,  as  you 
revolve  it  in  your  mind  ;  making  it  most  dear  to  you  and  most  dear 
and  irresistible  among  the  people. 

The  two  heaviest  objections  to  all  this  that  I  have  been  saying 
before  you  to-day,  are  that  an  elaborated  order,  covering  the  whole 
year,  is  fatal  to  that  revivalism  which  many  believe  in  and  love  ;  and 
that  an  external  order,  let  down  heavy  on  the  preacher,  is  likely  to 
impair  his  elasticity  and  make  his  sermonizing  drudge-work  too 
much  :  a  speaking  on  this  or  that  because  the  time  has  come  for 
the  same  and  not  because  his  mind  has  happened  to  kindle  to  it. 

As  regards  revivalism  ;  let  us  be  left  to  just  those  natural  and 
sweet  and  fruitful  vicissitudes  which  come  of  a  reverent  and  tender 
pause,  now  on  the  Advent  and  now  on  the  next  eventuality  and  the 
next  and  the  next,  in  the  great  history  of  the  Redeemer  of  the  world. 
As  regards  the  damage  to  one's  spontaneity  by  the  superimposition 
of  an  order,  I  observe,  first : — ■ 

It  is  found  in  experience  that  no  such  damage  is  incurred.  In 
that  thoroughly  detailed  system  for  getting  through  the  year  which 
is  presented  to  us  in  the  liturgies,  for  example,  of  the  liturgical 
denominations  when  any  Christian  season  arrives — as  Advent,  say — 
there  is  provided,  among  other  things,  a  pertinent  selection  of 
Scriptural  Lessons  to  be  read  and  thought  about :  and  what  sort  of 
a  mind  must  a  preacher  have  if,  with  the  solar  thought  of  the  Incar- 
nation before  him  and  with  the  Advent  Scriptures,  than  which 
nothing  was  ever  more  lyrical  and  contagious,  pouring  themselves 
into  him,  he  cannot  raise  a  free  flow  and  settle  to  his  theme  with 
delight?     A  man  who,  thus  stimulated,  feels  himself  bondaged,  is 


304  YALE  LECTURES. 

not  fit  to  be  a  preacher  of  the  Gospel  at  all.  You  need  not  tie 
yourself  to  the  particular  round  of  Scripture  Lessons  provided 
in  the  liturgies,  but  you  had  better  tie  yourself  to  some  provided 
round  and  not  make  your  own  selections  always  in  the  interest 
of  spontaneity.  An  individual  selection,  extemporized  from  Sunday 
to  Sunday,  is  always  a  partial  one.  Only  a  selection  deliberately 
marked  out  by  the  Church,  or  by  the  general  sense  of  some  repre- 
sentative body,  is  likely  to  compass  all  Holy  Writ  evenly  and  so 
furnish  an  even  culture  to  all  concerned.  As  a  matter  of  fact, 
I  repeat,  a  curriculum  does  not  destroy  spontaneity.  On  the  other 
hand,  it  immensely  increases  it.  Each  Sunday,  in  the  annual  speci- 
fied circle  of  Sundays,  presents  numerous  points  of  stimulation  to 
the  mind  and  calls  the  mind  out  and  makes  it  sing  in  its  theme.  I 
have  heard  very  able  ministers  of  my  own  denomination  say  that 
the  most  wearisome  and  distasteful  of  all  their  mental  work  was  the 
work  of  choosing  topics  whereon  to  preach.  They  were  at  liberty, 
ordinarily,  to  preach  on  any  one  of  ten  thousand  ;  and  that  was  the 
trouble.  It  would  be  a  mercy  to  them,  in  the  dubiousness  of  this 
unbounded  range  of  theirs,  to  nail  them  right  down,  even  to  Paul's 
cloak.  That  would  be  a  challenge.  And  instead  of  consuming 
their  vigor  in  a  vagabond  movement  through  all  topics  to  get  the 
right  one,  they  would  instantly  set  themselves  to  direct,  resolute 
digging  on  the  cloak ;  and  something  would  have  to  come.  Con- 
centration is  wholesome.  Each  summer,  when  my  vacation  draws 
nigh,  I  am  distracted,  I  notice,  by  the  great  numbers  of  summer 
resorts  to  which  I  may  go ;  but  on  that  particular  summer  when  I 
am  compelled  to  use  my  vacation  for  the  production  of  one  to 
a  dozen  lectures  wherewith  to  torment  you  the  following  winter,  I 
am  much  less  distracted.  I  select,  of  necessity,  some  place  in  the 
country  on  the  railway,  not  far  from  my  study  in  Hartford,  not  far 
from  that  familiar  desk  and  chair  wherein  my  poor  old  mind  feels 
most  at  home. 

Me  this  unchartered  freedom  tires 

said  William  Wordsworth.  There  is  no  liberty  worth  anything 
which  is  not  a  liberty  under  law.  "Thy  statutes  have  been  my 
songs,"  said  the  Psalmist.  Which  goes  to  show  that  objective  law 
may  be  transformed  into  spontaneity.  Statutes  into  songs  !  The 
prescriptions  of  the  Christian  Year  into  a  furtherance  to  the  preach- 
er's mind.     Statutes  into  songs.     I  do  not  know  that  the  Psalmist 


YALE  LECTURES.  305 

could  have  bettered  that  if  he  had  spent  years  upon  it.  I  do  not 
believe  he  knew  how  good  it  was.  In  that  sentence  of  his  he  inad- 
vertently plumped  out  the  innermost  feature  of  the  Christian  life  ; 
namely,  the  law  of  God  as  a  restraint  or  bondage,  utterly  dissolved 
away  in  the  free  flow  of  a  delighted  obedience. 


ASSIMILATION  OF  SERMON 
MATERIAL. 


Gentlemen,  most  of  you  feel  your  own  limitations,  I  dare  say. 
If  you  do  not,  I  feel  them  for  you.  So  do  your  professors.  But  I 
am  willing  to  believe  that  you  feel  them  yourselves  ;  your  limitations 
of  character  and  your  limitations  of  intellect.  In  other  words  the 
grace  of  God  has  not  finished  with  you  yet.  Neither  have  your 
teachers  and  the  various  other  forces  of  tuition.  And  in  your  present 
circumscribed  and  half-and-half  stage  of  development,  you  have  times 
of  looking  forward  to  the  forth-coming  days  of  your  service  as  Chris- 
tian ministers,  and  saying,  "  who  is  sufficient  for  these  things,  who 
has  character  enough,  who  has  brain  enough,  and  who,  in  fact,  has 
a  sufficient  body  for  a  really  victorious  handling  of  all  the  great  works 
and  tasks  that  seem  to  belong  to  our  calling." 

On  the  great  question  of  sufficient  bodies  I  will  not  dwell.  My 
private  opinion  is  that  bodies  are  useful  and  had  better  be  kept  up. 
Indeed  in  the  last  analysis,  success  in  ministerial  service  is  a  question 
of  bodies.  With  no  body  at  all,  that  is,  if  a  man  is  a  ghost  pure 
and  simple,  no  church  wants  him.  For  various  reasons  they  do  not. 
But  supposing  he  has  a  body ;  but  a  very  attenuated,  undigesting, 
shattered  and  inefficient  body ;  a  body  that  has  no  voice,  no  push, 
no  courage,  no  ability  to  sleep  nights  and  all  that :  why,  that  man's 
church  calls  will  be  few  and  ought  to  be.  So  then,  dear  Brethren, 
I  should  lecture  on  your  bodies,  and  warn  you  and  exhort  you  and 
tell  you  my  experience  and  point  to  illustrious  examples.  But  I 
pass  it  all,  as  I  shall  also  the  exceeding  great  question  of  sufficient 
character  for  good  service  in  the  ministry.  I  think  character  is 
more  possible  to  be  had  than  intellect.  There  is  less  of  it  in  the 
world,  but  that  is  not  because  it  cannot  be  had.     Every  man  can 


YALE  LECTURES.  307 

be  good  ;  ever  so  good  ;  good  enough,  as  you  may  say  ;  so  good  in 
fact,  that  his  parishioners  will  hardly  care  to  have  him  improved  ; 
but  not  every  man  can  be  very  bright  and  very  massive,  weighty 
and  awe-inspiring,  in  his  mind. 

And  another  thing,  your  goodness,  when  you  get  to  be  minis- 
ters, can  be  used  every  day  among  your  people  and  not  grow  stale ; 
that  is,  if  you  are  honest,  truthful  and  pious  to-day,  and  then  to- 
morrow are  honest,  truthful  and  pious  over  again,  and  so  on,  putting 
forth  the  self-same  qualities,  honesty,  truthfulness  and  piety  the 
whole  year  through,  nobody  wants  you  to  change,  because  you  have 
been  at  that  so  long  and  have  grown  so  reiterate  in  it.  No,  you 
are  just  as  relishable  the  thousandth  time  that  you  are  honest,  truth- 
ful and  pious,  or  the  ten-thousandth,  as  you  were  the  first  time. 
Whereas,  on  the  contrary,  if  you  promulge  the  same  idea  every  day 
in  the  year,  or  the  same  set  of  ideas,  you  grow  tame,  and  the  parish 
gets  tired,  and  you  must  say  something  different ;  and  right  there 
comes  the  pull  on  your  mind,  and  you  need  a  good  deal  of  mind, 
the  more  the  better ;  an  unlimited  mind  almost  you  begin  to  feel. 

So,  although  character  is  indispensable,  yet,  since  by  the  good 
grace  of  God  it  is  so  feasible,  and  when  you  get  it,  is  not  staled  by 
every  day  wear,  so  that  it  is  not  necessary  to  start  out  into  something 
brand-new  in  order  to  keep  your  people  interested,  I  will  pass  on 
to  consider  the  much  more  distressing  question  of  your  intellect : — 
that  instrument  whereby  you  satisfy  the  terrific  clamor  of  your  con- 
gregation for  ideas  ;  new  ideas ;  ideas  that  you  never  put  forth 
before,  exactly  or  ideas,  at  any  rate,  so  costumed,  decorated  and 
disguised,  that  your  hearer  will  have  a  feeling  that  he  has  fallen  on 
something  original ;  the  same  old  Gospel  perhaps,  but  the  old  Gospel 
so  freshly  expressed  as  not  to  be  a  whit  threadbare. 

I  would  not  ridicule  this  craving  for  freshness,  neither  would  I 
intimate  that  the  craving  cannot  be  gratified.  I  think  it  can.  Any 
old  truth,  re-lived  on  the  spot  by  the  man  who  speaks  it,  seems 
original  always  and  goes  out  with  authority.  Or  put  it  in  this  way ; 
whoso  utters  that  which  is  given  him  to  utter  by  the  Holy  Ghost 
operating  in  him  then  and  there  as  he  speaks,  makes  an  effect  on 
his  listening  congregation  precisely  as  real  news  would,  notwith- 
standing the  news  he  tells  is  simply  the  exceedingly  old  and  very  oft- 
told  tidings  of  salvation  by  Jesus  Christ.  There  is  something  very 
dear  and  encouraging  to  ministers  in  that  curious  fact. 

I  will  pass,  I  said,  to  the  question  of  your  intellect  and  how  you 


308  YALE  LECTURES. 

shall  handle  it  to  make  the  most  of  it,  in  both  size  and  productivity, 
so  that  your  congregation  shall  never  be  worn  out  under  your 
preaching. 

Two  years  ago,  when  I  was  speaking  in  this  place,  I  said  in  a 
certain  lecture  :  where  do  our  thoughts  come  from  ?  when  a  preacher 
originates  his  own  thoughts,  where  do  they  come  from ;  and  when 
he  gets  them  somewhere  else,  where  may  that  elsewhere  be  ?  And 
I  went  on  to  try  to  answer  these  questions,  saying  for  substance, 
that  our  thoughts  come  from  our  interiors  and  from  the  manifold 
endless  exteriors  whereby  we  are  surrounded  ;  not  as  though  the 
thoughts  of  interior  origin  are  not  made  up  largely  of  external 
material,  for  they  certainly  are  ;  but  in  those  thoughts  that  are  dis- 
tinctively mind-born  and  interior  mind-born  and  interior  as  con- 
trasted with  thoughts  sense-born  and  exterior,  the  exterior  material 
has  been  so  digested  and  assimilated  and  made  the  man's  own,  that 
he  is  not  in  the  least  conscious  of  exteriors,  but  seems  to  himself  to 
be  originating  absolutely.  So  then,  although  at  first  it  seems  super- 
ficial and  inexact  to  speak  of  two  sources  of  thought,  namely :  the 
mind  itself  and  the  world  of  outside  material,  nevertheless,  so  far  as 
our  own  consciousness  reports  on  the  matter,  that  distinction  is  exact. 
We  do  consciously,  that  is,  taking  consciousness  as  our  text,  origi- 
nate many  ideas,  whereas  many  other  ideas  that  we  have  and  put 
forth  we  consciously  do  not  originate,  we  being  at  the  time  aware 
that  they  come  from  beyond  our  own  minds ;  they  are  external 
things ;  we  are  in  debt  for  them  to  books,  men,  nature  and  God. 
If  I  had  not  already  spoken  here  at  good  length  on  ideas  subject- 
ively originated — in  the  sense  now  explained — I  should  want  to  do 
it  to-day.  But  I  must  not  repeat,  (you  may  repeat  honesty,  truth- 
fulness and  piety,  but  not  ideas,)  and  I  have  more  than  enough  to 
do  in  discoursing  on  Materials  external,  and  the  way  we  must  use 
them,  love  them  and  beware  of  them. 

Well  then,  I  am  going  to  speak  from  this  time  forth  until  the 
hour  ends,  on  Mental  Assimilation,  bearing  down  all  the  while  on 
externals,  even  as  in  that  former  lecture  I  bore  down  on  internals. 

You  have  noticed,  I  take  it,  that  some  preachers  are  very  sub- 
jective in  their  discourses,  dealing  a  great  deal  with  Mental  processes, 
discussing  what  that  Mental  movement  and  state  called  faith,  pre- 
cisely and  consciously  is  and  what  repentance  is  and  how  it  feels  and 
how  it  gets  started  in  a  man,  and  wherein  it  is  distinguishable  from 
numerous  other  things  that  look  and  feel  in  us  a  good  deal  like  it, 


YALE  LECTURES.  309 

and  what  "  full  assurance  of  faith  "  is,  and  what  remorse  is  and  how 
conscience  in  us  can  be  known  from  other  attributes,  and  how  con- 
science works  under  either  one  of  a  hundred  different  sets  of  circum- 
stances ;  and  in  the  complicated  mental  process  of  turning  to  God, 
what  and  how  many  separate  elements  can  be  traced  by  a  long- 
headed, acuminated  analysis  of  the  matter.  Subjective  preaching, 
I  say — mental  philosophizing  in  the  pulpit — sharp,  detailed,  hound- 
like, endless,  able,  amazing,  philosophizing — you  have  seen  some  of 
it  and  heard  of  a  great  deal  more,  for  it  is  a  kind  of  utterance  that 
was  more  prevalent  in  the  old  times  than  now  but  it  still  lives  ;  in 
some  strength,  here  and  there,  and  although  it  is  highly  respectable 
in  its  intellectual  aspects  and  although  a  certain  strong  cultus  may 
be  built  on  it,  yet  on  the  whole  there  is  a  better  way  for  preachers 
than  the  subjective  way.     A  better  way. 

The  subjective  method  breeds  an  over-self-inspecting  and  anx- 
ious piety.  A  man  led  by  his  minister  to  concentrate  on  his  own 
interiors,  must  be  anxious.  What  is  there  there  that  has  any 
particular  cheer  in  it !  At  first  sight  one's  own  self  is  depressing 
enough  to  him,  but  when  that  first  sight  is  carried  on  into  a  minute, 
indefinite,  mental  and  spiritual  self-analysis,  the  thing  gets  worse 
and  worse  and  no  good  and  sweet  peace  is  possible  under  such 
a  regimen  as  that. 

Moreover,  a  preacher  very  prone  to  subjectivity,  and  therefore 
not  cordially  prone  to  externals  and  intellectual  incomes  from  that 
quarter,  gradually  formulates  for  himself  a  narrow  individuality — of 
course  he  does — the  only  way  to  expand  and  multifold  one's  self,  is 
to  get  out  of  one's  self  and  take  note  of  other  individualities,  and 
hear  what  they  have  to  say  ;  giving  our  own  say-so  the  advantage  of 
rectification  by  theirs  ;  but  this  preacher  of  whom  I  am  speaking,  is 
averse  to  all  that ;  introspection  is  his  forte  and  delight,  and  so  far 
as  expansion  is  possible  by  introspection,  he  expands,  but  by  that 
alone,  for  these  subjective  persons  are  not  unlikely  to  be  earnest 
and  persevering,  and  what  individuality  they  have  is  as  strenuous 
and  resolute  as  you  please.  But  I  say  again  and  must  insist  on  it, 
they  are  narrow — they  are  strong  theologians  as  likely  as  not — they 
know  precisely  what  they  believe  and  why  they  believe  it,  and  why 
you  and  I  ought  to  believe  it,  and  why  we  are  distinctly  less  than 
first-class  persons,  if  we  do  not  so  believe  ;  and  they  are  formidable 
champions  to  deal  with  in  a  theological  wrestling  match ;  however 
they  are  narrow  and  a  considerable  part  of  their  strength  comes  from 


310  YALE  LECTURES. 

their  narrowness,  from  the  concentration  of  narrowness,  from  the 
ignorance  of  narrowness,  just  as  when  you  look  at  a  picture  through 
two  tubes,  so  that  you  can  see  nothing  in  the  wide  creation  but  the 
picture,  it  immensely  brightens  your  sense  of  the  picture. 

And  being  circumscribed  themselves,  their  preaching  tends  to 
circumscribe  those  who  listen  to  them  ;  and  circumscribed  individ- 
ualities thus  get  multiplied  and  theology  becomes  stationary  in  those 
congregations,  as  theology  ought,  no  doubt,  in  its  gist,  substance  and 
core,  but  as  theology  ought  not  as  respects  the  way  men  grasp, 
handle,  express  and  apply  that  substance  and  core.  Think  of 
evolving  your  theology  from  your  own  consciousness  and  from  the 
materials  of  your  own  experience,  and  making  it  thus  of  just  your 
own  size  and  no  more  ;  when  thousands  of  first-class  men  in  all 
ages  have  been  laboring  in  that  field  and  have  reported  their  labors, 
and  when  theology,  as  it  now  stands,  is  the  result  of  a  long  historic 
process  organically  unfolded  under  the  ever-present  and  orderly- 
moving  influence  of  the  Holy  Ghost,  more  or  less  !  Think  of  the 
implied  egotism  and  practical  impudence  of  such  a  proceeding  !  It 
is  only  implied  ordinarily,  I  am  happy  to  say.  The  men  are  not 
conscious  of  what  they  are  doing.  But  if  they  just  would  consent 
to  make  one  trip  beyond  their  private  and  interior  selves,  to  see  the 
size  of  the  creation,  and  count  up  the  host  of  other  thinkers  abroad 
upon  the  face  of  the  Earth  and  back  in  Christian  history,  they 
would  be  conscious  of  their  egotism,  and  of  their  disrespect  to  a 
great  company  of  exceedingly  bright  and  honest  souls. 

There  are  other  evils  of  this  thing  which  I  have  found  it  con- 
venient to  call  subjectivity,  but  I  must  hasten  along  with  you. 

I  have  prepared  the  way  now  to  deal  directly  with  the  external 
materials  of  thought — the  thousand  elements  that  our  minds  are 
privileged  to  take  in,  grind  down,  vitally  transmute,  assimilate  and 
make  sermons  of. 

First  of  all,  how  are  we  to  get  hold  of  all  that  external  stock 
and  stuff?  Not  by  being  intellectual  hermits,  building  our  cabins 
in  the  little  sequestered  nook  of  our  own  consciousness  and  having 
a  quiet,  happy,  self-conceited  time  all  to  ourselves.  That  will  not 
do,  as  we  have  just  seen.  No,  we  must  go  forth  among  men  and 
multiply  to  the  uttermost  our  points  of  contact  with  human  life  and 
thought. 

Specifically,  we  must  take  advantage  of  wide  conversation  on 
every  subject  of  human  interest,  not  omitting  all  possible  converse 


YALE  LECTURES.  311 

with  common  people,  for  there  is  scarcely  a  man  anywhere  in  these 
parts,  however  illiterate  and  unthoughtful,  who  is  totally  devoid  of 
"views,"  (as  they  are  called)  and  stubborn  views  at  that;  views 
that  he  will  fight  and  die  for,  if  you  would  have  him ;  views  that  he 
has  assimilated  somehow  and  made  to  be  the  pith,  push  and  throb 
of  his  personality ;  and  then  underneath  his  views,  lies  that  great 
human  nature  that  all  men  have  ;  a  very  respectable  and  even 
august  and  pathetic  thing ;  get  yourself  into  conversable  terms  with 
that,  O  preacher ;  listen  to  what  he  has  to  say ;  try  your  theology  on 
it,  and  see  that  nature  squirm  as  likely  as  not  and  express  itself  and 
fly  at  you  ;  and  thus  illuminate  both  the  excellencies  and  the  defects 
of  your  theology,  more  than  a  course  of  lectures  could,  perchance. 
And  while  you  converse  with  all  sorts  of  persons,  do  it  genially, 
receptively ;  not  as  perpetually  shocked  by  many  things  that  you 
hear ;  nonsensical  things,  infidel  things,  malignant  things,  shocking 
things — supposing  they  are  shocking,  you  are  around  after  ideas,  not 
to  be  horrified  and  paralyzed  ;  this  is  God's  world  after  all  and  truth 
is  God's  truth,  and  He  has  everything  firmly  in  hand,  and  you  are 
permitted  to  share  His  tranquillity  in  the  midst  of  errors  and  terrors 
and  about  all  that  is  believed,  said  and  done,  here  and  everywhere. 
Move  about.  Get  around.  Travel  your  parish.  Do  not  be  one  of 
those  much-cursed  and  much-despised  "literary  fellows,"  whereof 
we  have  heard  in  these  times  from  the  many  lips  of  the  Philistines  ; 
recluse  thinkers,  unpractical  men,  do  not  be  of  that  sort.  Meet 
everybody  whom  you  can  ;  and  when  you  meet  him  assimilate  him 
and  make  sermons  of  him — as  I  heard  Mr.  Beecher  say  at  a  dinner 
of  mutton,  "the  next  time  that  sheep  bleats,  it  will  be  in  a  pulpit." 
Again,  I  insist  that  you  attend  the  regular  and  irregular  and 
never-ending  meetings  of  the  Clergy  and  of  the  Churches ;  the 
Associations,  Conferences,  Synods,  Conventions,  Congresses,  Clubs 
and  all  the  gregarious  manifestations  of  religious,  ecclesiastical  and 
theological  men  and  women.  I  say  attend  all,  that  is,  attend  habit- 
ually and  numerously.  Attend  the  stated  and  organic  convocations 
of  the  Christian  body  to  which  you  belong,  always — make  that  your 
rule — and  then,  as  to  the  assemblies  of  Sister  bodies,  attend  often 
enough  at  least  to  show  that  you  are  a  light-seeking  and  promis- 
cuous person.  The  American  Tract  Society  has  always  circulated 
tracts  against  what  it  calls  "  promiscuous  dancing,"  but  never  a  tract 
against  promiscuous  Christian  fellowship  and  comparison  of  views. 
Your  brethren  of  other  communions  can  teach  you  many  things. 


312  YALE  LECTURES. 

So  can  the  elect  and  expert,  assembled  brethren  of  your  own  Com- 
munion ;  the  ministers  gathered  in  council  to  anatomize  some 
young  pulpit  candidate ;  the  Church  Congress,  where  the  wolf  is 
very  particular  not  to  lie  down  with  the  kid,  but  to  stand  up  and 
debate  with  the  same  and  keep  on  loving  him  all  the  while — the 
district  meeting  for  spiritual  commingling  and  for  the  discussion  of 
practical  methods — my  experience  of  the  modifying  power  of  all 
these  things  on  one's  thinking,  to  say  nothing  of  their  several  other 
forms  of  power  and  of  the  love-feast  aspect  of  them,  leads  me  to 
speak  very  favorably  of  them  to  you  who  are  on  your  way  to  the 
time  when  you  will  be  preachers,  and  when,  therefore,  all  grists 
that  can  be  induced  to  come  to  your  mill  will  be  valuable  to  you. 
I  even  like  to  see  Christian  ministers  dropping  in  to  "  Ninteenth 
Century  Clubs,"  as  Dr.  McCosh  and  others  did  the  other  day  in 
New  York.  There  the  steadfast  old  gentleman  sat  to  hear  what 
Infidelity  had  to  say  for  itself,  and  decide  within  his  own  mind  anew, 
whether  or  not  to  give  Christianity  up.  Being  a  Scotchman  and  a 
doughty  one,  he  did  not  give  it  up,  and  went  away  from  the  discus- 
sion still  a  Christian ;  but  not  the  same  Christian  that  he  was  when 
he  went  in.  He  had  more  light ;  more  light  on  the  impregnable 
solidity  of  the  Christian  system ;  more  notion  how  to  put  truth  to 
the  minds  of  men  in  these  days ;  more  sense  of  the  way  Calvinism 
is  unrelishable  to  the  natural  man ;  more  per-fervid  determination 
to  cry  aloud  and  spare  not  on  the  eternal  truths. 

Again,  you  will  find  much  in  books  to  put  into  your  hopper  as 
sermon-makers.  The  first  of  books  is  the  Bible.  More  grists  are 
for  you  there  than  in  any  other  one  place — or  any  ten  places.  I  do 
not  say  that  because  it  is  the  proper  thing  and  necessary  to  make 
this  lecture  of  mine  acceptable  at  this  particular  point,  but  because 
I  have  myself  discovered  it  to  be  so.  I  shall  be  referring  to  the 
Bible  again  in  a  few  moments  and  therefore  shall  not  say  about  it 
now  so  much  as  I  might.  But  note  this  one  thing  :  that  if  you 
have  a  habit  of  going  to  this  Book  to  see  what  it  teaches,  rather  than 
to  see  how  copiously  it  supports  and  can  be  made  to  support  your 
own  theological  and  other  prepossessions,  preconceptions,  prejudg- 
ments, then  continually  you  will  find  yourself  inclined  to  read 
numerous  human  books  that  try  to  expound  the  Bible  and  that  take 
up  single  Bible  themes  and  expand  them  into  whole  volumes ; — 
and  even  those  Books  that  do  not  seem  to  you  scripturally  founded, 
you  will  look  into.     In  short,  you  will  be  a  multifarious  reader  and 


YALE  LECTURES.  313 

your  sermon-stuff  will  come  from  God's  enemies,  not  as  frequently 
as  from  God's  friends  may  be,  but  almost  so. 

I  do  not  suppose  it  is  our  bounden  duty  always,  when  we 
approach  the  Bible,  to  unload  all  our  life-long  precious  preposses- 
sions and  read  as  though  no  point  of  truth  had  ever  been  settled 
and  as  though  it  were  impossible  to  conceive  what  the  Book,  which 
we  are  now  reading,  is  likely  to  say  to  us  on  this  or  that  or  the  other 
point.  We  go  to  the  Bible  for  a  good  many  purposes  and  at  any 
given  time  we  approach  it  in  a  state  of  feeling  accordant  with  the 
specific  purpose  that  we  then  happen  to  have  in  mind ;  but  I  claim 
that  one  state  of  mind  in  which  we  ought  to  approach  the  Bible,  is 
absolute  teachableness  and  hunger  for  light.  Absolute  teachableness 
implies  that  we  have  discharged  from  our  mind  all  bias,  all  prejudg- 
ment, all  previous  knowledge,  as  the  basis  of  opinion.  You  are  not 
in  a  state  of  perfect  docility  if  you  are  full  of  opinions  already,  no 
matter  how  rational  and  biblical  those  opinions  may  be.  Well,  per- 
fect docility  in  the  presence  of  this  teaching  Bible  makes  you  want 
to  know  exactly  what  the  Bible  teaches,  if  you  go  to  it  with  a  con- 
firmed conscious  prepossession  that  it  teaches  this  and  that,  you  are 
not  in  a  state  of  inquiry  as  to  what  it  teaches  ;  but  if  you  are  docile, 
you  are  in  such  a  state,  and  if  so,  then  it  is  inevitable  that  you  take 
counsel  of  your  fellow  men,  the  theologians  and  others,  who  have 
studied  the  Bible  and  have  written  out  in  books  what  they  have 
found  there.  That  is  my  idea.  And  I  should  advise  a  wide  reading 
habit.  Read  the  writers  with  whom  you  agree,  if  you  want  to,  but 
just  as  much,  perhaps,  read  those  who  you  think  have  gone  off  from 
exact  foundations,  if  only  they  are  honest  and  really  have  ideas. 
They  are  as  able  as  anybody  to  stock  your  mind  and  make  you  a 
productive  sermonizer. 

The  external  materials  of  thought  are  inexhaustible  and  preach- 
ers are  entitled  to  them  all.  History  furnishes  material ;  philosophy 
furnishes  some  ;  science  some  ;  poetry  some  ;  all  the  multiplying  olo- 
gies  some  ;  civil  affairs  contribute  ;  everything  contributes  ;  even  the 
humble  minutiae  of  daily  life  are  very  filling  to  the  right  kind  of  a 
mind  and  may  be  worked  over  into  sermon  form — the  thinker  is  a 
universal  devourer,  or  may  be,  not  for  purposes  of  gluttony,  but  for 
purposes  of  self-nutrition,  and  ultimately  for  the  nutrition  of  others. 

But  let  me  come  a  little  nearer  now  to  this  subject  of  nutrition 
— mental  nutrition — the  thing  that  the  fecundity  of  preachers 
depends  on  so  much. 


314  YALE  LECTURES. 

These  externals  whereon  I  have  been  remarking,  these  mate- 
rials for  the  omnivorous  mind  you  may  possess  yourself  of  in  two 
ways — two  and  no  more,  so  far  as  I  now  see — you  may  have  them 
memoritively,  or  you  may  have  them  assimilatively  ;  in  addition  to 
that,  you  may  have  them  in  both  ways  at  once.  Quite  as  often  as 
any  way,  however,  the  strongly  memoriter  men  are  not  very  assimi- 
lative, and  on  the  other  hand  you  may  see  prodigious  assimilators, 
men  chock-full  of  the  ail-about  plunderings  they  have  made,  who, 
nevertheless,  cannot  remember  much  of  anything,  especially  in 
detail.  If  they  had  no  way  of  accumulation  but  the  memoriter  way, 
their  emptiness  would  be  pitiful  and  practically  embarrassing  both 
to  them  and  to  us. 

But  they  have  another  way.  A  man  has  not  lost  his  food 
because  it  has  disappeared  from  his  stomach ;  neither  has  he  lost 
the  mental  food  which  he  has  gathered  in,  because  it  has  disappeared 
from  his  memory.  The  food  disappeared  from  the  stomach  because 
it  would  go  more  fully  and  really  into  the  man's  possession,  being 
vitally  distributed  to  the  different  parts  of  his  system,  and  in  the 
distribution  being  made  over  from  merely  material  and  dead  atoms, 
into  vital  atoms ;  atoms  not  unworthy  of  a  resurrection  to  eternal 
vitality,  when  the  Lord  shall  come.  The  difference  between  memo- 
rized mental  material  and  assimilated  mental  material,  begins  now 
to  come  out. 

The  disadvantages  of  the  memorized  sort  are  more  than  you 
would  think  at  first. 

Memoriter  possessions  you  may  lose.  Most  of  them  you  must 
lose.  And  you  may  lose  all  of  them  some  day.  To  recover  them 
again,  possibly,  in  the  resurrection  state,  but  for  the  present  we  are 
incessantly  dropping  our  memorized  accumulations.  The  Rev.  Sam 
Jones  in  one  of  his  peculiar  sermons  recently,  spoke  of  a  feeble 
little  Mississippi  steamboat  so  weak  in  her  steam  appliances  that 
whenever  she  whistled  it  stopped  her  engine  ;  and  similarly,  the 
limited  memory  of  man  is  not  strong  enough  to  take  in  a  new 
thought  without  letting  out  some  old  one,  once  laboriously  taken  in. 
A  most  miserable  and  ridiculous  faculty  in  that  one  aspect  of  it. 
How  fast  does  a  man  get  rich  and  powerful  in  his  mind  by  that  pro- 
cess of  taking  and  dropping,  like  the  mill-mind  hopper?  How 
much  does  he  grow?  How  long  would  it  take  to  make  an  able- 
bodied  thinker  of  him,  a  man  of  real  weight  and  respectability ;  a 
powerful  preacher,  for  example,  provided  this  curious  faculty  of  his, 


YALE  LECTURES.  315 

his  memory,  threw  overboard  every  day  exactly  so  much  of  her 
cargo  as  would  balance  what  she  that  day  took  in.  Providentially 
the  memory  does  not  do  that  exactly,  but  on  the  contrary,  retains 
more  or  less  of  the  old  when  new  materials  are  shipped — after  all 
though,  this  being  unable  to  whistle  without  stopping  your  engine, 
this  constant  losing  from  recollection  more  or  less,  while  you  are  at 
work  to  acquire,  makes  one  ask  as  I  did,  how  long  it  would  take  to 
make  a  person  full-grown  and  sufficient,  if  his  mental  possessions 
were  all  of  that  fugitive  memoriter  sort.  And  how  many  men,  and 
even  ministers  we  have  seen  who  are  scarcely  larger  at  fifty,  in  the 
great  particulars  of  intellectual  manhood,  than  they  were  when  they 
left  the  theological  seminary ;  because  they  have,  for  the  most  part, 
led  a  memoriter  life.  They  have  read  enough  and  been  told  enough 
to  amount  to  something,  but  as  the  hopper  grows  no  richer  for  the 
grist  that  is  in  it,  and  therefore  after  ten  thousand  bushels  have  been 
thrown  in  has  not  advanced  in  the  least  beyond  its  original  hopper 
state,  and  would  not  have  advanced  if  the  whole  ten  thousand  bush- 
els had  stayed  in  it  forever ;  so  the  memorizing  men,  however 
repeatedly  they  have  taken  in  the  grists  of  the  mind,  and  even  if 
they  are  endowed  with  those  phenomenal  memories  that  hold  on  to 
grists  like  a  resurrection  memory,  do  not  grow  very  perceptively 
greater,  do  not  weigh  in  a  conflict,  do  not  preach  ponderously,  do 
not  get  home  on  anybody  with  any  special  efficacy — with  any  efficacy, 
I  mean,  corresponding  to  their  years  and  their  privileges  and  their 
unlimited  consumption  of  excellent  outward  material.  Sir  William 
Hamilton  in  his  lectures  on  Metaphysics,  while  discussing  the  mem- 
ory and  telling  what  it  has  been  able  sometimes  to  do,  mentions 
a  young  Italian  who  could  have  thirty-six  thousand  words  read  to 
him  hap-hazard  out  of  a  dictionary,  just  once,  and  then  could  start 
off  and  repeat  the  thirty-six  thousand  in  the  precise  order  in  which 
he  heard  them,  and  could  turn  the  list  end  for  end  and  repeat  it 
backward ;  and  could  recite  the  list  skipping  every  other  word  and 
could  do  all  these  things  after  a  year  or  two  had  passed  away ;  and 
I  do  not  now  remember  what  else  he  could  do — and  do  not  want  to 
remember — the  thing  is  frightful  enough  already.  But  did  you  ever 
hear  of  that  man  among  the  really  great  men  of  history?  Did  those 
thirty-six  thousand  words  prove  to  be  of  the  nature  of  an  increase  to 
that  miserable  young  fellow  in  any  respect?  Sir  Isaac  Newton  and 
Lord  Bacon,  Shakespeare  and  Milton,  Homer  and  Plato,  Daniel 
Webster,  William  Gladstone  and  President  Porter,  could  not  all  put 


316  YALE  LECTURES. 

together  recollect  a  thousand  words ;  so  the  Italian  was  at  least 
thirty-six  times  the  man  that  they  would  be  if  all  rolled  into  one 
corporeal  unit,  or  would  have  been  they  twenty-five  times  over, 
provided  that  the  gigantic  accumulator  in  his  constitution  had  been 
able  to  assimilate  the  materials  of  all  sorts  which  it  was  able  to  take 
in.  But,  so  far  as  heard  from,  it  was  more  retentive  than  assimila- 
tive ;  and  the  Italian  stands  forever  a  solemn  sermon  to  the  world 
on  the  comparative  uselessness  of  unassimilated  possessions.  There 
he  is,  a  plethoric  nobody  and  a  warning. 

That  distinguished  Englishman,  William  Carpenter,  I  recollect, 
in  his  work  on  Mental  physiology,  also  gives  some  striking  illustra- 
tions of  the  insufficiency  of  mere  memorizing  to  increase  a  man's 
size,  weight  or  quality  ;  or  more  particularly,  he  enforces  by  numbers 
of  anecdotes  the  idea  that  strictly  memoriter  acquisitions,  or  things 
gained  by  "cramming,"  as  a  collegian  would  say,  do  not  stay  by  one 
very  long.  In  they  come  and  out  they  go  and  the  man  is  a  simple 
sluiceway,  except  that  of  course  some  small  amount  of  material 
sticks  to  the  sides  of  the  sluice  and  stays — to  no  good  purpose 
however,  as  it  is  not  taken  into  the  man's  circulation,  but  only  sticks. 
Now,  Brethren,  I  have  brought  you  to  a  day  of  judgment  and 
I  want  you  to  decide  whether  you  will  be  memorizers  or  assimi- 
lators.  If  you  are  good  memorizers,  your  people,  as  you  preach  and 
talk  to  them,  will  get  a  good  deal  from  you  no  doubt.  Perhaps  you 
can  stand  up  before  them  and  run  off  thirty-six  thousand  words  as 
straight  as  a  string.  But  I  want  to  mention  to  you  some  of  the 
drawbacks  in  that  kind  of  preaching.  I  have  more  than  hinted 
some  of  them  already,  but  the  subject  is  not  used  up. 

First,  if  you  get  your  homiletical  materials  by  cramming,  using 
a  great  deal  of  memory  and  not  much  of  anything  else,  your  personal 
increase  will  be  likely  to  be  small — I  have  said  that  once  and  now  I 
say  it  again,  your  personal  increase  will  be  small.  It  is  a  pity  to 
spend  several  days  making  a  sermon,  and  then  to  take  aim  and  fire 
it,  while  you  remain  as  empty  as  a  fired  gun,  when  you  might  fire 
your  whole  charge  and  yet  retain  the  whole  charge  for  your  private 
use  ever  after ;  retain  it  as  completely  as  though  you  had  not  fired 
at  all.  If  only  your  ammunition  were  assimilated  ammunition,  firing 
would  not  decrease  it,  any  more  than  pumping  exhausts  a  living 
spring.  Pump  away,  the  spring  knows  where  to  get  more.  Preach 
away  too,  you  are  just  as  rich.  Is  not  that  worth  knowing,  for  a 
man  who  may  want  to  preach  forty  years  in  the  same  pulpit. 


YALE  LECTURES.  317 

Secondly,  preaching  in  the  use  of  memoriter  materials  does  not 
bring  much  gusto  to  the  preacher  himself.  What  is  the  gusto  of  a 
sluiceway  as  compared,  for  instance,  to  the  gusto  of  a  growing  plant  ? 
Or  make  this  comparison.  A  plant  stands  in  the  ground  and 
takes  up  the  mold  and  rejects  the  dead  grit,  and  takes  the  rain  and 
the  dew  and  the  air  and  the  sun,  and  secretly  makes  them  all  over 
into  just  what  it  wants — namely,  into  life  and  living  forms,  with  a 
murmur  of  inward  joy  the  while,  that  anybody  can  hear  and  share 
who  has  the  ears  for  it ;  and  then  right  along  side  of  the  plant,  stands 
a  stake  driven  down  for  some  purpose  ;  and  what  does  the  stake 
do?  Does  it  sing  at  its  work?  No,  it  is  doing  no  work.  It  has 
nothing  to  sing  about.  It  just  stands  there  a  mere  stick ;  good  to 
hitch  too  perhaps — a  sound  and  safe  stick,  and  therefore  respectable 
— but  a  stick.  Live  things  are  liable  to  eccentricities  in  their  grow- 
ing and  forth-pushing ;  sticks  are  not ;  but  which  of  the  two  is  the 
happier,  in  all  likelihood,  the  live  things  or  the  sticks?  So  the 
preachers.  He  who  speaks  from  out  of  the  vital  stores  of  his  mind 
and  nature,  has  his  own  private  glow  and  gladness  always  ;  enough 
to  pay  him  well  for  his  work,  salary  or  no  salary. 

Thirdly,  since  memoriter  material  lumbering  a  minister's  mind 
and  preached  at  stated  times  does  not  make  much  heat  and  vital 
joy  in  him,  it  does  not  over-much  do  it  for  his  hearers.  What  is 
preached  out  of  the  memory,  is  apt  to  be  received  only  into  the 
memory.  How  can  an  unvital  man  vitalize  other  men  ?  The  idea 
is  absurd.  He  may  instruct  them.  He  may  drill  them.  He  may 
exercise  their  patience.  But  as  respects  vitalization  he  is  a  failure. 
And  after  all,  my  brethren,  vitalization  is  the  greatest  work  of 
preachers.  I  had  rather  be  alive  with  little  information,  than  dead 
with  tons  of  it.  I  had  rather  hear  a  preacher  of  limited  contents, 
so  that  his  contents  have  been  turned  into  life  and  personal  force, 
than  to  hear  a  man  whose  contents  run  up  to  thirty-six  thousand, 
but  are  in  him  simply  as  stored  in  a  warehouse.  It  is  sometimes 
debated  whether  preaching  will  not  die  out  before  long,  because 
books  and  periodicals  are  so  multiplied.  When  you  can  get  as  good 
a  sermon  as  was  ever  written,  in  printed  form,  for  five  cents,  why  go 
to  the  church,  spend  a  hundred  dollars  a  year  for  a  seat  and  consume 
an  hour  each  Sunday,  to  hear  the  local  minister,  a  limited  man  and 
not  a  natural  orator,  preach  a  much  poorer  sermon?  How  are  you 
going  to  answer  that?  By  saying  that  the  risen  Jesus  formally 
appointed   preaching.     But  he  appointed  it  for   some  substantial 


318  YALE  LECTURES. 

reason  ;  and  what  is  that  reason  ?  There  are  numbers  of  answers 
to  that ;  but  the  one  that  I  want  to  bring  out  at  present,  is  this  :  that 
while  the  contents  of  a  book,  or  that  five  cent  sermon,  coolly  read 
in  the  quiet  of  one's  home,  may  be  powerful  and  useful,  the  self-same 
contents,  or  even  much  lesser  contents,  may  be  still  more  stimula- 
tive and  useful,  if  taken  into  a  vital  mind  and  there  transmuted  in 
the  mysterious  processes  of  life  into  personal  substance  and  fervor, 
and  then  preached.  I  think  we  preachers  will  have  to  surrender  to 
books  and  periodicals,  if  we  intend  to  go  by  memory  and  mechan- 
ical public  rehearsals  of  what  we  have  read.  Of  course  the  Holy 
Spirit  could  use  any  sort  of  a  preacher  to  secure  effects  ;  but  accord- 
ing to  all  observation  thus  far,  he  will  not.  The  Holy  Spirit  is  a 
reasonable  Spirit.  It  respects  certain  well-known  laws ;  and  if  it 
uses  a  certain  man  or  preacher,  it  is  able  to  explain  why  it  uses  him. 

Well,  dear  brethren  and  gentlemen,  I  must  have  some  words 
with  you  now  on  a  matter  that,  I  presume,  you  have  been  wondering 
I  did  not  come  to  before  ;  on  the  question,  namely  ;  how  this  famous 
business  of  assimilation  is  to  be  accomplished.  Is  there  any  recipe 
for  it  that  a  reasonable  man  and  even  a  young  man  can  compre- 
hend and  put  to  practical  use.  Are  not  assimilators  born,  not  made  ; 
or  if  they  are  not  made,  can  a  person  make  himself  to  be  an  assimi- 
lator,  otherwise  than  by  many  years  of  effort,  experimentation,  fum- 
bling and  mistakes?  If  it  takes  nearly  the  whole  life-time  of  a 
minister  to  fashion  himself  into  this  so  desirable  thin^,  had  he  not 
better  give  up  before  he  begins  and  lay  out  what  strength  is  natural 
to  him  in  some  other  direction. 

I  propose  to  answer  that.  It  does  not  take  long  for  our  bodies 
to  begin  to  assimilate.  It  is  a  success  from  the  start.  And  things 
vegetable  make  a  success  of  it.  A  live  slip  set  into  the  ground  is 
as  cunning  in  the  matter  as  is  an  old  wise  tree.  Assimilation  is 
deeply  mysterious,  but  it  is  feasible ;  and  a  man  does  not  need  to 
be  old,  nor  to  be  a  philosopher  to  do  it.  So  much  encouragement 
as  that  we  have,  on  the  very  face  of  the  subject.  Mr.  Drummond 
has  written  an  ingenious  book  on  "  Natural  Laws  in  the  Spiritual 
World,"  and  I  fancy  that  if  our  bodies  can  assimilate  and  do  it 
instinctively  and  commence  so  soon  as  they  are  born,  then  our  minds 
— and  all  minds — can  do  it ;  and  can  begin  pretty  early,  and  that 
they  will  do  a  large  part  of  their  assimilation  instinctively,  if  we  give 
them  a  good  chance. 

I  do  not  claim  that  a  man  can  sit  himself  down  and  say  to  his 


YALE  LECTURES.  319 

mind — "go  to  now,  do  you  just  assimilate" — and  then  have  that 
mind  march  right  off  and  do  his  bidding.  No,  he  must  get  at  it  in 
ways  different  from  that. 

I  will  not  spend  any  time  on  it,  but  I  am  compelled  to  say  that 
highly  assimilative  minds,  as  a  general  rule,  are  not  found  in  unas- 
similative  bodies.  It  is  a  mortifying  fact,  but  a  literal,  that  your 
physical  nutritive  processes  are  the  foundation  of  your  mental  nutri- 
tive. An  imperfectly  nourished  brain  does  not  receive  impressions 
absorptively.  A  brain  not  supported  by  a  rousing  stomach,  doth 
not  drink  up  all  kinds  of  mental  aliment,  like  a  sponge.  Make  a 
note  of  that  and  act  accordingly.  Even  the  memory  fails  if  physi- 
cal nutrition  fails.  I  have  had  some  experience  of  that  myself,  at 
times. 

But  let  us  lift  out  of  physicals  and  note  the  following  things.  I 
hardly  know  where  to  strike  in,  but  perhaps  a  thing  as  fundamental 
as  any  to  be  said,  is,  that  time  is  an  indispensable  element  in  assim- 
ilation. Time  !  The  one  vice  of  "cramming," — the  reason  that 
cramming  never  made  a  scholar — is  that  the  deposits  made  in  the 
mind  are  made  to  be  used  right  off,  used  and  discharged.  A  vice 
of  some  preachers  is,  that  they  cram  for  the  Sunday  immediately 
before  them,  amassing  great  store  of  material,  but  not  giving  their 
minds  the  time  necessary  to  grind,  vitalize  and  appropriate  it.  The 
question  of  time  in  physical  assimilation  was  looked  into  long  ago. 
A  good  many  years  back,  a  certain  Alexis  St.  Martin,  (if  that  was 
his  name,)  had  the  covering  of  his  stomach  shot  away  and  there  was 
a  life-long  healed  opening  there,  so  that  the  doctors  for  the  first  time 
in  the  history  of  the  world  could  leisurely  enter  a  live  man  with  their 
interesting  experiments.  And  they  went  in.  They  dropped  in  all 
kinds  of  food  at  the  end  of  strings  and  then  through  the  opening 
they  watched  how  matters  went  on ;  how  long  it  took  to  get  diges- 
tion along  to  this,  that  and  the  other  stage ;  how  much  longer  it 
took  some  foods  to  get  on  than  it  did  others  and  how  some  sub- 
stances never  got  on.  It  was  a  wonderfully  edifying  opportunity. 
But  whatever  they  dropped  in,  took  time,  they  found,  and  could  not 
be  much  hurried.  They  could  cram  the  man  and  then  beg  him  to 
get  the  cram  worked  over  by  the  next  Sunday,  but  the  man  could 
not.  Nature  was  too  strong  for  him.  Nature  knew  that  she  was 
entitled  to  just  so  much  time,  carefully  measured  out,  and  she  took 
it,  Sunday  or  no  Sunday,  and  would  make  no  haste. 

Well,  minds  know  the  same  thing.     If  you  read  largely  for  an 


320  YALE  LECTURES. 

immediate  purpose — your  next  sermon  for  example — your  intellect, 
(or  to  speak  more  profoundly,  your  nature,)  has  no  opportunity  to 
do  that  brooding  which  it  dearly  enjoys,  that  it  surely  will  do  when 
permitted ;  and  that  it  must  do  if  it  is  going  to  make  itself  fat  out 
of  that  reading.  And  just  here  I  mention  it  as  a  curious  fact,  that 
this  brooding  business  done  by  your  mind,  when  it  gets  a  chance, 
is  not  a  volitional  effort,  as  a  rule ;  you  do  not  do  the  brooding, 
your  mind  does  it ;  you  go  off  about  your  business,  perhaps,  you 
give  scarcely  a  thought  to  that  inwardly  deposited  material,  you  are 
too  much  occupied ;  but  all  the  while  your  mind  is  manipulating 
that  mass,  that  intellectual  stock,  brooding  it,  fructifying  it,  coaxing 
it  to  be  vital,  sucking  it  up  into  its  own  circulation  by  a  thousand 
capillaries,  raising  it  from  the  memorized  matter  to  matter  assimi- 
lated and  organized  ;  a  very  amazing  operation  ;  amazing  and  inscru- 
table. I  like  to  dwell  on  it ;  it  is  so  subtle,  so  effectual  and  so  useful. 
I  recollect  telling  you  here  once,  in  some  connection  which  I  have 
now  forgotten,  that  many  times  when  I  have  been  shut  up  to  just 
Saturday  morning  for  the  writing  of  my  Sunday's  sermon  I  have 
made  special  effort  to  select  my  topic  for  that  sermon,  Friday  eve- 
ning— sometimes  on  my  bed  in  the  few  moments  before  I  went  to 
sleep — because  I  knew  by  long  experience  that  if  the  topic  was 
only  lodged  in  me,  my  mind  during  all  my  hours  of  unconscious- 
ness, would  be  turning  it  over  and  in  the  morning  when  I  woke  I 
should  certainly  find  my  sermon  well  on  its  way.  How  often  that 
has  happened  to  me. 

But,  to  come  back  to  my  thought.  Assimilation  requires  time. 
Therefore,  you  must  read  a  great  deal  and  take  in  materials  also 
from  other  sources  than  books,  (and  the  sources  are  numerous)  ; 
you  must  gather  in  much,  not  in  view  of  a  near  day  when  you  will 
use  those  accumulations,  but  in  view  of  the  welfare  of  your  mind 
for  all  time ;  and  you  should  even  ingather  often  for  no  purpose 
whatever,  but  only  for  enjoyment  at  the  moment.  You  may  read 
much  poetry  in  that  way  ;  and  there  are  kinds  of  poetry  that  do  not 
give  you  anything,  unless  they  are  read  in  that  way.  Those  kinds 
were  produced  in  the  meditative  and  leisurely  mental  moods  of  the 
author ;  and  they  speak  only  to  corresponding  moods  in  the  reader. 

Or  take  that  bewitching  American  man,  John  Burroughs  ;  when 
he  goes  abroad  upon  the  face  of  Nature,  his  travel  does  not  sim- 
mer down  to  the  strenuous  and  fierce  questions,  which  is  the 
shortest  road  between  two  given  points  ;    and  which  is  the  swiftest 


YALE  LECTURES.  321 

conveyance  from  place  to  place,  or  how  soon  can  I  pick  up  the  stuff 
for  an  essay.  Not  so.  He  idles  along,  with  hardly  any  conscious 
intention ;  knowing  that  any  spot  in  the  whole  open  world  where 
he  may  happen  to  find  himself  at  any  given  moment,  is  inexhaus- 
tively  rich  in  almost  every  element  that  can  nourish  and  fascinate 
the  mind  of  man.  Therefore  his  contact  with  Nature  is  eminently 
rewarding.  She  saturates  him.  He  gives  her  time  to  saturate  him. 
He  sits  down  in  her  bounties  and  beauties  chin-deep  and  soaks. 
He  lets  time-measures  go.  He  knows  nothing  but  Now.  Practi- 
cally he  is  in  Eternity.  At  any  rate,  he  has  passed  beyond  dates 
and  periods,  and  engagements  and  beginnings  and  endings  and 
responsibilities  and  the  importance  of  making  haste  to  get  his  mind 
where  it  can  repeat  thirty-six  thousand  words  ;  and  there  is  nothing 
left  of  the  universe  but  first,  Burroughs  ;  second,  Now  and  third,  the 
flower  at  his  feet,  the  insect  humming  in  his  ear,  the  soft  wind  on 
his  cheek,  the  grass,  the  talk  of  some  near  bird ;  the  dear  natural 
things. 

Now  it  is  wholesome  to  read  such  books  as  his.  They  are  the 
outcome  of  a  peculiarly  assimilative  mind.  They  are  leisurely  and 
they  require  leisureliness.  No  matter  about  next  Sunday.  No 
matter  whether  his  book  will  work  into  sermons  or  not.  It  infallibly 
will,  but  if  you  read  it  as  intending  that  it  shall,  you  have  fallen 
totally  out  of  relations  to  that  book  and  Burroughs  can  do  little  for 
you.  What  you  want  is  to  cease  from  intentions,  especially  from 
immediate  intentions,  and  thus  secure  leisureliness  and  absorption. 

It  is  implied  in  this  absorptive  or  assimilative  reading,  that  your 
mind  at  the  time  is  in  a  state  of  more  or  less  energy.  Absolute 
torpidity  and  snoring  over  a  book ;  suspends  all  capillary  action  of 
the  mind,  or  at  least  retards  it,  and  it  is  as  though  you  were  not 
reading.  However,  it  is  not  necessary  in  the  particular  kind  of 
reading  that  I  am  now  trying  to  describe,  that  you  be  in  any  formal 
effort  over  it.  No  ;  please  loaf  through  the  book.  The  mind  that 
wrote  it  loafed ;  now  do  you  loaf.  Only  please  keep  awake  while 
you  loaf. 

But  there  is  a  little  different  kind  of  reading,  of  which  I  wish  to 
speak.  It  is  assimilative  reading,  too ;  and  assimilative  partly 
because  it  lets  in  the  element  of  time.  In  the  reading  last  men- 
tioned, you  are  receptive,  in  the  main,  but  in  this  kind  you  are  more 
affirmative.  You  actively  inquire.  You  take  time  to  do  it.  You 
say,  is  this  author's  position  sound?     Is  he   exactly  fair  towards 


322  YALE  LECTURES. 

opponents  ?  Is  he  exact  in  his  facts  ?  How  do  his  notions  har- 
monize with  the  great  immutable  points  of  religion  ?  There  are  fifty 
questions  you  can  ask — and  if  you  ask  them  it  will  slow  your  move- 
ment and  make  you  ruminative  ;  and  possibly  some  single  state- 
ment of  your  author  will  lead  you  into  a  whole  day's  rumination. 
You  are  not  consciously  amassing  stock  for  sermons.  You  are  not 
cramming  to  meet  some  engagement.  You  are  simply  not  letting 
that  man  sluiceway  through  you  his  ideas  and  propositions,  and 
leave  nothing  behind  for  your  enrichment.  However,  you  are  not 
specifically  resolved  to  assimilate.  The  word  assimilation  does  not 
enter  your  head.  All  the  assimilation  you  accomplish  is  incidental 
and  unwitting.  All  that  you  know  yourself  to  be  doing  is,  drifting 
along  those  pages  considerately ;  sifting,  questioning,  judging.  But 
sifting,  questioning  and  judging,  carry  assimilation  in  them.  They 
give  the  lengthened  and  drawn  out  time  requisite  for  assimilation. 
The  mind  can  not  assimilate  by  a  simple  touch-and-go  contact  with 
anything.  Newspaper  reading  is  the  greatest  touch-and-go  move- 
ment in  these  days.  And  it  breeds  a  touch-and-go  habit,  which  is 
apt  to  be  carried  into  all  other  reading.  It  may  almost  be  doubted 
whether  the  exceedingly  increased  reading-habit  of  the  public,  in 
these  latter  times,  has  made  the  intellectual  fatness  and  personal 
weight  of  each  reader  more  than  the  fatness  and  weight  of  his  less 
bookish  grandfather.  It  seems  like  another  aggravated  case  of 
sluiceway.  I  often  think  of  it  when  I  read  the  statistics  of  books 
drawn  from  circulating  libraries  and  find  that  seventy-five  per  cent 
and  over  of  the  drawings  are  novels ;  and  also,  when  I  recollect 
various  young  persons  of  my  acquaintance  who,  each  Saturday,  take 
from  the  public  library,  one,  two  and  three  books,  to  read  over  Sun- 
day. If  a  person  does  that  last,  you  may  know  two  things  ;  first  that 
his  books  are  slosh ;  and  secondly,  that  if  they  are  accidentally  not 
slosh  on  any  given  Sunday,  he  will  make  slosh  of  them,  so  far  as  his 
own  mental  increase  is  concerned,  by  the  unruminative  way  in 
which  he  reads  them,  coursing  through  on  a  run,  so  as  to  be  sure  to 
be  ready  for  two  or  three  more  books  by  the  next  Sunday  surely. 

I  say  then,  in  order  to  assimilation  by  reading  in  order  that 
you  may  be  more  plump,  full  of  color  and  puissant  when  you  end  a 
book  than  when  you  began  it,  you  must  either  read  it  in  the 
leisureliness  and  tranquillity  of  simple  enjoyment — as  I  explained  a 
little  back — or  in  the  determined,  robust  use  of  your  several  faculties 
of  analysis,  comparison,   reflection  and  judgment ;  all  this  being 


YALE  LECTURES.  323 

carefully  unpractical  to  this  extent  and  in  this  sense  ;  that  you  are 
not  consciously  getting  ready  for  anything — as  next  Sunday's  sermon, 
for  example — but  are  doing  the  work  for  its  own  dear  sake.  The 
moment  you  let  next  Sunday  into  the  business,  that  particular,  low- 
class  performance  known  as  "cramming"  is  apt  to  begin;  that 
operation  which  is  infested  by  these  two  vices ;  that  it  is  too  pre- 
dominantly memoriter,  and  that  the  necessary  time-element  is 
eliminated. 

You  will  understand,  brethren,  that  I  dwell  on  books  simply  as 
one  of  the  external  sources  of  intellectual  supply.  There  are  num- 
bers of  others,  but  the  principles  that  should  govern  us  in  availing 
ourselves  of  them,  are  the  same  as  those  just  mentioned,  with  regard 
to  remunerative  contact  with  books.  We  must  give  our  minds  time. 
We  must  discharge  ourselves  from  immediate  intentions  a  good 
deal.  We  must  resolutely  inquire,  sift,  judge  and  slowly  chew  our 
cuds.  To  be  sure,  our  people  are  waiting  for  our  last  cud,  so  that 
we  are  tempted  to  feel  that  we  cannot  chew  it,  but  must  lump  it 
right  out  on  to  them  and  then  run  for  another ;  still  a  preacher's 
salvation  as  a  man  good  for  fifty  years  in  the  same  pulpit,,  depends 
on  his  putting  himself  under  a  rather  iron  rule,  that  his  very  last 
cuds  positively  shall  not  be  used,  but  only  those  that  having  been  a 
good  while  in  his  system,  are  no  longer  cuds  at  all,  but  fat,  muscle, 
bone,  marrow,  pluck  and  fire.  That  is  what  cuds  are  for.  A  sermon 
of  cuds  is  profoundly  inadmissable.  A  sermon  of  materials  that  used 
to  be  cuds,  is  all  right.  More  than  once  in  the  course  of  my  life,  I 
have  had  young  ministers,  yet  in  the  first  years  of  their  service,  ask 
me  whether  they  should  sermonize  from  the  level  of  their  general 
information  and  power,  or  should  get  largely  above  themselves  each 
Sunday,  by  force  of  a  specific  exaggerated  preparation  for  that  Sun- 
day ;  and  always,  by  God's  help,  I  have  had  strength  to  say,  just 
what  I  have  said  to  you,  to  wit : — no  cramming — as  a  rule,  no 
cramming — you  can  prepare  enough  without  slipping  into  that  vice 
which  we  so  call. 

There  are  several  qualifying  remarks  which  I  would  like  to 
introduce  here,  but  I  must  take  a  final  movement  now  to  observe 
that  some  materials  are  more  assimilable  than  others.  The  plant 
rejects  grit  and  takes  up  mold.  Animal  digestion  also  is  very  par- 
ticular about  what  it  undertakes  to  dissolve  and  put  to  vital  use. 
And  the  mind  is  full  of  a  similar  fastidiousness,  or  spirit  of  discrimi- 
nation.    The  thirty-six  thousand  words  of  that  young  man,  or  a  table 


324  YALE  LECTURES. 

of  logarithms,  or  the  thin  and  pompous  little  homily  of  the  Rev.  Mr. 
Chadband,  when  he  gets  on  to  his  saintly  and  feeble  legs,  are  not  so 
nourishing  as  a  great  poem,  or  a  passage  out  of  human  life,  or  a  judi- 
cious selection  from  Holy  Writ.  And  when  I  commenced  this  lec- 
ture I  meant  to  point  out  what  it  is  precisely  that  makes  one  food 
assimilable  by  the  mind  and  another  not — but  no  matter ;  we  all 
know  an  assimilable  food  when  we  begin  to  chew  on  it — if  it  is 
gravel  we  find  it  out  and  if  it  is  real  meat  we  find  that  out.  I  would 
not  slander  even  gravel.  It  may  be  good  for  exercise  and  for 
mental  discipline  in  mathematics.  Moreover,  men  of  phenomenal 
digestion  can  eat  it.  Hens  eat  gravel ;  and  must  have  it  I  am  told, 
if  they  are  to  keep  up  their  usefulness.  Speaking  of  those  thirty-six 
thousand  words,  I  suppose  Professor  Whitney  would  not  ask  anything 
better  that  to  be  turned  loose  among  them  to  spend  his  eternity. 
But  most  of  us  are  like  the  Italian,  to  whom  they  were  gravel.  Of 
course,  to  some  minds,  pretty  much  everything  is  gravel ;  but  the 
general  run  of  us  have  our  good  foods,  which  we  know  as  the  ox 
knows  his  master's  crib.     Good  foods — good  foods  !     Very  good  ! 

But  perhaps  the  word  most  worth  saying  here  and  at  last,  is, 
that  the  best  food  in  the  world  for  assimilative  purposes  is  the  Bible, 
Put  that  in  your  pocket  to  make  an  essay  on — the  Bible  as  a  food 
— not  a  guide,  not  a  treasury  of  important  information,  not  an  arsenal 
for  fighting  men  to  draw  on ;  but  a  food  to  make  men  thick-set, 
strong,  healthy,  sizable  and  handsome.  Some  eminent  ministers 
have  been  described  as,  "  Men  of  one  book."  Well,  supposing  their 
one  book  had  been  the  New  York  Sunday  Tribune,  or  Tupper's 
poems,  (good  as  they  be),  or  Edwards  on  the  Will,  (powerful  as  it 
is),  or  the  Algebra  of  Professor  Loomis  ;  or  any  one  of  the  now 
numerous  solid  books  put  forth  by  the  fertile  Faculty  of  this  great 
University.  Would  those  eminent  ministers  who  spent  their  lives 
in  the  Bible  and  felt  their  enthusiasm  grow  to  the  very  last  and 
came  to  be  admired  for  their  stature,  sap,  leafage  and  heaven-like 
bountifulness,  have  achieved  all  that  on  any  conceivable  book  save 
The  Book — do  you  think — even  although  multitudes  of  men's  books 
are  books  Bible-born  ?  Now  why  is  this  ?  In  that  essay  that  you 
write,  just  dig  that  out. 

It  is  thought  by  some  that  if  they  can  explode  Christianity, 
they  will  have  exploded  the  Book  that  enshrines  it  and  reduced  it 
to  the  level  of  other  interesting  old  volumes.  On  that  I  should  say, 
they  surely  will  have  exploded  the  main  strength  of  the  Book ;  but 


YALE  LECTURES.  325 

I  fancy  it  would  survive  and  forever  transcend  all  other  productions 
on  account  of  the  immense  human  elements  that  are  packed  into 
it,  to  say  naught  of  anything  else.  The  elements  of  human  life  as 
it  is — the  universal  human  elements — the  elements  fitted  to  carry  it 
home  to  the  business  and  bosoms  of  the  entire  human  family,  not- 
withstanding that  family  are  dispersed  abroad  in  dissimilar  tribes, 
nations,  races  and  individuals.  I  wrote  a  sermon  the  other  day  on 
Rebecca  and  Isaac,  confining  myself  to  the  simple  old  story  of  how 
Isaac  got  Rebecca — and  I  could  hardly  live  through  it,  the  whole 
thing  was  so  fresh,  dewy,  self-evident  and  sufficing ;  so  heart-to-heart 
with  all  hearts  that  know  what  a  heart  is.  And  all  through  the  Bible 
you  find  quantities  and  quantities  of  the  same  sort  of  thing — that 
something  or  other  which  makes  the  Book  the  spokesman  of  the 
human  family ;  the  interpreter  of  the  soul  of  man,  man's  congenial 
other  self,  the  Book  that  finds  him,  warms  him,  strengthens  him, 
goes  into  his  circulation  and  makes  his  blood  red,  virile  and  copious. 
I  feel  often  that  I  would  go  on  taking  texts  from  the  Bible,  carrying 
the  Bible  around  in  my  pocket,  putting  it  in  my  trunk  when  I  travel, 
handing  it  to  the  bride  for  a  present,  reciting  it  to  the  sick,  reading 
it  at  the  burial  and  getting  its  sentences  immortal  sculptured  over 
the  dead,  even  if  Infidelity  succeeded  in  large  measure  in  reducing 
its  supernatural  contents.  Anyway  and  always,  it  is  the  best  thing 
we  have ;  the  best  Book  to  feed  on — the  only  Book  that  a  man  can 
exclusively  live  on  and  yet  be  broad,  deep,  high,  manifold  and  very 
great. 


VERACITY  IN  MINISTERS. 


The  subject  that  I  desire  to  unfold  before  you  to-day  is  the 
rather  important  one  of  Veracity  in  Ministers. 

I  wondered  at  first  whether  I  would  not  say  inveracity,  but 
after  a  minute,  I  saw — or  thought  I  saw — that  you  might  see  or 
might  think  you  saw  a  sly  flicker  of  suggestion  in  that  to  the  effect 
that  ministers  are  inveracious  sometimes ;  and  I  did  not  wish  to 
begin  with  even  hinting  such  a  thing.  Doubtless  they  are  so,  some 
of  them ;  doubtless  all  of  them  have  their  temptations  to  be  inve- 
racious ;  and  doubtless  the  best  man  may  lose  his  footing  for  an 
instant,  and  speak  or  act  in  a  manner  that  does  not  bear  looking  at 
afterwards  :  we  are  all  human,  I  suppose ;  but  the  clerical  class, 
taken  as  a  body,  are  among  the  most  honest  of  men,  they  being 
almost  simple  sometimes,  so  that  lay-folk  take  advantage  of  them. 
Not  only  do  they  keep  out  of  jail  pretty  unanimously,  not  only  do 
they  get  themselves  up  to  the  conventional  standard  of  veracity,  the 
standard  that  will  answer  for  lawyers  and  merchants  and  society 
people,  but  they  valiantly  wax  honest  a  shade  beyond  that,  and 
speak  and  act  considerably  as  though  they  felt  they  might  die  be- 
fore night.     That  is  the  kind  of  persons,  on  the  whole,  that  they  are. 

They  have  some  special  advantages  for  being  honest. 

The  vocation  which  they  have  selected  takes  them  necessarily 
out  of  the  companionship  of  the  dishonest  classes  and  sets  them  in 
a  good  moral  atmosphere,  where  they  certainly  ought  to  behave. 
To  be  sure  they  mingle  with  the  dishonest,  but  it  is  as  having  a 
moral  mission  to  them  and  not  as  comrades  and  affiliated  souls. 
Pitch  never  sticks  to  any  one  who  goes  nigh  it  in  that  way.  Again, 
ministers  as  having  an  assured  social  position,  do  not  need  to  prac- 
tice the  numerous  small  insincerities  and  time-servings  which  many 


YALE  LECTURES.  327 

do  practice  in  order  to  secure  a  desirable  standing.  That  is  a 
blessed  let-off. 

Also,  they  are  quite  looked  up  to  as  authorities ;  and  where  a 
man's  dictum  has  that  advantage,  he  may  put  it  out  frankly  and  not 
turn  and  squirm,  and  dispense  an  hypocritical  palaver  in  order  to 
make  himself  acceptable. 

Also  they  are  not  men  hired  by  the  day,  and  liable,  therefore,  to 
be  dismissed  if  they  happen  to  speak  forth  some  unpleasant  truth. 

Also,  by  moving  around  among  men  and  women  a  good  deal, 
and  lending  a  hand  in  innumerable  social  assemblies,  they  come  to 
a  social  poise  and  tact  which  saves  them  from  being  surprised  into 
swarms  of  little  lies,  that  are  popped  out  by  way  of  recovery  from 
emergencies.  If  a  lady  of  great  blandishments  and  great  nerve 
forces  them  into  a  sudden  corner,  instead  of  lying  to  get  out  of  it 
as  millions  of  bashful  and  unpracticed  souls  would  and  could  hardly 
help  doing,  they,  these  ministers,  are  apt  to  have  the  self-command 
to  parry  and  eel  their  way  out ;  and  if  things  grow  really  desperate, 
they  have  the  vigor  and  the  character  to  just  settle  into  a  silence 
which,  while  it  is  very  good-natured  and  gentlemanly,  is  also  very 
baffling  to  the  enemy.  This  is  a  small  matter  to  discourse  upon, 
but  I  have  myself  been  saved  from  so  many  falsehoods  in  precisely 
that  way,  that  I  quite  dote  on  it,  and  like  to  mention  it  as  one 
of  the  felicities  of  the  clerical  situation. 

And  there  are  others,  I  suppose.  But  ministers  have  their 
disadvantages,  too.  There  are  a  good  many  reasons  why  they 
should  not  be  perfectly  truthful — a  good  many  forms  in  which  they 
can  lie  if  they  want  to.  And  some  of  the  forms  are  so  subtle  as  to 
be  hardly  perceptible,  while  some  are  so  plausible  and  wholesome- 
looking,  that  the  most  pious  preacher  might  be  taken  in  by  them. 

In  the  first  place  a  man's  energetic  desire  to  do  good  and 
save  souls  may  induce  him  to  resort  to  the  following  devices  : 

He  may  use  exaggerated  language.  No  matter  about  the  lan- 
guage, he  says,  if  I  can  only  get  God's  very  truth  into  these  sleepy 
souls.     I  must  exaggerate,  otherwise  I  shall  not  get  any  hold  at  all. 

Or  he  may  cater  to  his  hearers'  prejudices  by  lines  of  argument, 
illustrations,  quotations,  and  numerous  contrivances  of  speech,  that 
he  does  not  himself  quite  believe  in  and  enjoy; — for  if  this  hearer 
is  stirred  up  and  made  to  bristle,  if  he  is  not  stroked  the  way  of  his 
fur,  all  communication  with  him  is  cut  off.  What  is  the  use  of 
preaching  then  ?     You  can  not  save  his  soul !     Did  not  Jesus  him- 


328  YALE   LECTURES. 

self,  and  his  Apostles,  put  in  reasonings  on  their  assemblies  that 
were  not  absolute,  but  were  the  nonsense  of  the  people  themselves, 
taken  for  granted  for  the  moment  and  for  a  purpose.  It  was  an 
oratorical  adjustment  to  the  case  in  hand.  If  the  Jews  believed 
that  insanity  and  so  forth  were  the  result  of  demonization,  why 
might  not  the  great  Teacher  speak  of  it  in  that  way; — not  as 
affirming  demoniacal  possessions,  but  as  manipulating  a  people  who 
did  affirm  such  things.  You  see  how  cleverly  a  preacher  may  salve 
his  conscience  with  the  doctrine  that  the  end  justifies  the  means ; 
especially  when  the  means  are  nothing  worse  than  an  argument  not 
so  faultlessly  excellent  and  irresistible  as  the  hearer  thinks  it  to  be. 
Again,  there  is  nothing  more  melting  to  a  congregation,  and 
more  likely  to  get  their  souls  clear  open,  to  what  their  minister  may 
say  for  their  good,  than  to  notice  that  he  has  a  thorough-going 
interest  in  them — not  in  them  as  a  multitude  or  mass,  but  in  them 
as  individuals ;  so  that  he  cannot  refrain  from  shaking  hands  with 
them  often,  looking  into  their  eyes,  asking  about  each  member 
of  their  families,  weeping  with  them  when  they  are  in  trouble,  and 
putting  forth  all  sorts  of  emotional  concentration  upon  them  one  by 
one,  week  in  and  week  out.  This  is  natural  and  beautiful  and  there  is 
nothing  to  be  said  against  it.  But  do  you  not  see  what  a  temptation 
the  minister  is  under  to  furnish  precisely  the  thing  his  people  want,  and 
in  quantities  to  suit  the  purchaser  !  Perhaps  this  man  was  not  born 
very  emotional.  Perhaps  he  was  born  well  enough,  but  has  been 
cooled  off  since  he  was  born  by  a  long-continued  devotion  to 
study,  to  things  intellectual  rather  than  affectional,  so  that  now  he  is 
more  brainy  than  hearty.  A  good  many  things  are  supposable,  but 
no  matter  about  supposables ; — here  is  this  daily  call  for  pastoral 
effusiveness.  And  for  effusiveness  in  the  pulpit,  too.  He  must 
preach  tenderly,  yearningly  and  all  that.  He  must  have  a  tone  in 
his  voice  that  can  reach  clear  to  the  place  of  tears  on  occasion.  I 
say  must ;  not  as  meaning  that  he  absolutely  must,  but  that  he  had 
better.  And  there  he  is.  He  can  heroically  refuse  to  go  any 
further  than  he  can  in  this  business,  and  thus  save  his  own  soul ;  or 
he  can  overdraw  his  reservoirs  to  save  their  souls.  And  all  that  I 
have  to  say  about  it  is,  that  he  is  invited  to  be  inveracious  by  an 
invitation  about  as  seductive  as  a  man  ever  gets.  If  he  succumbs,  he 
becomes  "professional"  as  it  is  called  : — professional  ! — a  terrible 
word  that  ought  to  make  a  minister  squirm  as  if  the  shirt  of  Nessus 
were  on  him. 


YALE   LECTURES.  329 

Again,  a  preacher  is  continually  invited  to  be  more  orthodox 
than  he  may  happen  at  heart  to  be.  All  the  world  over,  conformity 
is  a  fine  advantage  to  any  man.  Where  there  is  a  state  Church,  as  in 
England,  and  Russia  and  in  Italy  in  the  old  times,  conformity  is  the 
one  balm  of  life.  If  you  take  into  account  both  the  other  world  and 
this,  conformity  to  God  is  the  best  thing ;  but  if  you  leave  out  the 
world  to  come,  and  consider  the  one  matter  of  comfortable  circum- 
stances in  this  present  Kingdom  on  Earth,  there  is  nothing  equal  to 
conformity  to  the  reigning  religion.  Conform  or  die,  was  the  racy 
alternative  they  used  to  put  to  people.  Afterwards,  that  was  miti- 
gated, and  took  this  shape  ;  conform  or  die  socially  and  politically, 
and  in  respect  of  facilities  for  getting  your  daily  bread.  At  pres- 
ent the  pressure  of  the  most  advanced  parts  of  Christendom  upon 
the  more  laggard  parts  and  even  upon  such  as  China,  Madagascar 
and  the  "  unspeakable  Turk,"  is  so  severe,  that  what  is  called  "relig- 
ious liberty,"  is  enjoyed  almost  everywhere.  Still,  some  remainders 
or  semblances  of  rigor,  left  over  from  the  grim  long-ago,  are  to  be 
discovered  anywhere  you  please  to  look.  This  country  is  as  toler- 
ant of  dissent  as  any,  I  presume  ;  but  even  here  I  should  rather  be 
a  Congregational  minister  than  some  others  I  might  name.  In 
Philadelphia  there  are  well  on  towards  a  hundred  Presbyterian 
Churches  I  am  told — almost  more  than  is  really  necessary,  a  Con- 
gregationalist  might  be  mean  enough  to  say — but  what  I  will  say  is, 
that  in  that  city  it  were  perceptibly  better  to  be  a  Presbyterian 
minister  than  a  Unitarian.  You  would  get  more  invitations  out — 
more  appointments  on  important  public  committees,  (those  small 
exaltations  that  keep  a  man  advised  of  his  own  importance)  ;  more 
furtherance  all  around  in  any  enterprise  you  might  start.  The  kind 
of  invitation  out  that  Roger  Williams  had  when  he  tried  to  stay  in 
Massachusetts,  that  Unitarian  man  would  miss  in  these  improved 
and  clement  times ;  but  almost  as  totally  might  he  miss  the  whole 
miscellany  of  agreeable  invitations — just  as  one  of  those  hundred 
Presbyterian  ministers  would  miss  a  good  deal  probably,  if  he  should 
undertake  to  set  up  in  Salt  Lake  City.  More  than  a  generation 
ago,  Dr.  Horace  Bushnell — if  I  may  mention  him  once  more,  as 
having  known  him  and  his  case  so  well — was  a  more  than  suspected 
man,  as  regards  his  conformity  to  Congregational  or  even  evangeli- 
cal standards ;  and  that  dispute  cost  Bushnell  a  world  of  trouble. 
It  did  not  unhorse  him,  because  he  was  an  athletic  rider  and  had  a 
good  horse  under  him,  in  his  faithful  North  Church  of  Hartford — 


330  YALE  LECTURES. 

then,  too,  he  had  an  unweariable  pugnacity  of  his  own  that  kept 
him  from  being  too  humble  under  attack,  to  say  nothing  of  the  good 
conscience  and  the  love  of  truth  that  were  in  him,  but  the  ado  over 
him  was  a  noisy  and  distressing  one — bad  enough  at  all  events  to 
show  how  important  a  reasonable  amount  of  reputation  for  ortho- 
doxy is.  If  the  pressure  on  a  man  towards  orthodoxy  took  the 
form  only  of  a  single,  belligerent,  heavy  attack,  one  square  fight 
might  and  main  and  then  over  with,  it  were  not  so  bad  ;  but  fre- 
quently it  is  not  an  open  war  at  all,  but  simply  an  impalpable  some- 
thing or  other  in  the  air,  a  something  that  keeps  on  year  after  year,  and 
in  the  which  the  poor  man  breathes.  It  does  not  exactly  kill  him — 
he  almost  wishes  it  would,  but  it  does  not ; — it  merely  takes  the 
caloric  out  of  him,  slowly  and  effectually,  and  makes  life  something 
less  than  life  ;  just  as  when  you  go  into  those  great  art  galleries  in 
Rome,  in  the  winter,  where  no  fire  has  been  since  the  morning  of 
the  creation ;  at  first  you  are  entirely  comfortable,  but  by  and  by 
you  begin  to  notice  that  a  process  of  devitalization  has  set  in.  It 
does  not  amount  to  anything  on  your  entrance,  and  you  have  no 
idea  of  leaving  the  gallery  on  account  of  it.  You  are  not  really 
uncomfortable,  you  say,  but  you  wish  there  was  a  fire.  Ah  !  well, 
you  are  a  slightly-scuttled  ship,  and  you  will  disappear.  So  is  it  I 
fear  as  regards  that  imperceptible  mist  of  distrust  which  envelopes 
a  minister  who  is  a  little  strange  doctrinally.  This  air  is  good 
enough,  he  says  at  first,  courageously — pretty  fair — I  can  stand  it  if 
they  can.  But  in  the  course  of  years  he  discovers  that  they  can 
furnish  more  cold  mist  than  he  can  breathe  with  any  comfort.  So 
you  see  the  strain  on  him  to  conform  may  be  just  awful  at  last,  and 
as  likely  as  not  he  starts  out  to  overhaul  his  opinions,  peradventure 
he  can  reformulate  them  in  a  manner  to  have  them  sound  like  the 
good  old  traditional  truth  divine. 

And  while  he  is  in  this  business  of  revision,  he  is  curiously 
helped  to  make  it  thorough  by  numbers  of  weighty  arguments, 
among  which  this  stands  out  as  large  as  any ;  that  if  the  people  to 
whom  he  preaches  are  the  least  bit  shaken  in  their  opinion  touching 
his  soundness,  his  ability  to  benefit  them  by  anything  he  says,  how- 
ever true,  is  impaired,  if  not  ended.  That  Greek  there  in  their 
pulpit  they  fear,  even  when  he  brings  presents.  Therefore  he  must 
just  stop  being  a  Greek,  as  fast  as  he  can. 

Again,  piety  is  of  much  value  to  a  minister.  A  little  piety 
even,  goes  a  great  way — and  a  great  deal  goes  still  further.     There- 


YALE  LECTURES.  331 

fore  he  must  furnish  it.  And  the  temptation  is  to  furnish  more  than 
he  has.  And  that  is  inveracity  in  one  of  its  inoffensive  forms.  I 
call  it  inoffensive  with  reference  simply  to  the  fact  that  the  man's 
motive  for  being  more  pious  than  he  is,  is  the  glory  of  God  through 
the  salvation  of  the  souls  committed  to  his  care.  He  cannot  bear 
to  have  his  people  no  more  pious  than  he  may  happen  to  be. 
What  a  low  piece  of  business  it  were  for  a  minister  to  make  him- 
self the  standard  for  his  people.  In  his  sermons  he  always  says  : 
"Be  ye  perfect,  even  as  your  Father  in  heaven  is  perfect."  There 
is  no  implication  in  such  utterance  that  the  man  who  speaks 
it  forth  is  perfect.  That  were  an  absurd  idea.  No ;  he  is  simply 
holding  up  that  measure  of  character  which  is  authoritatively  given 
him  to  hold  up.  Well,  if  he  preaches  beyond  himself  in  that  man- 
ner, why  may  he  not  act  beyond  himself,  and  take  on  just  that  holy 
tone  that  he  knows  to  be  so  impressive  upon  the  children  of  men. 

My  Brethren,  I  am  showing  you,  or  giving  you  a  picture  of 
the  Devil  weaving  his  nets,  because  I  remember  what  Solomon  said 
— "Surely,  in  vain  the  net  is  spread  in  the  sight  of  any  bird." 
My  dear  young  birds,  there  is  one  of  Satan's  nets  for  you  in  plain 
sight.  He  will  want  to  persuade  you  to  be  pious  beyond  the  facts. 
He  will  never  spur  you  to  be  pious  in  more  than  seeming,  that  were 
to  build  up  the  Kingdom  that  he  hates — but  he  will  edge  you  along 
to  be  hypocrites  if  he  can, 

And  here  is  another  net.  Often  you  as  a  minister  may  feel 
that  certain  views  held  from  of  old  in  the  religious  community,  ought 
to  be  modified.  They  are  too  stringent.  Those  views  have  respect 
perhaps  to  the  manner  of  keeping  Sunday,  or  to  the  precise  kind  or 
amount  of  infallibility  there  is  in  the  Bible,  or  to  the  question  of 
the  punishments  of  God ;  but  you  sincerely  fear  that  if  the  com- 
munity begin  to  relax  from  the  old-fashioned  rigor,  they  will  relax 
for  good  and  all  before  long ;  and  you  cannot  have  that.  So  you 
wink  at  their  present  ignorance  and  let  them  stay  ignorant.  You  do 
not  dare  do  otherwise.  You  do  not  exactly  advocate  these  ideas  of 
theirs,  but  you  somehow  manage  to  let  the  people  go  on  supposing 
that  you  think  as  they  do  on  these  matters.  You  say — "The  truth 
is  not  to  be  told  at  all  times,"  and  other  old  saws  of  prudence  and 
sanctified  common-sense  you  hunt  up,  and  calm  your  mind  with 
them. 

Or  it  may  be  that  the  public  mind  is  not  so  affirmative  as  it 
ought  to  be  on  some   point.      Men   have   come  to   have   sleazy 


332  YALE  LECTURES. 

notions  about  penalty  and  hell,  about  the  propitiatory  element  in 
the  work  of  Christ,  about  the  moral  and  doctrinal  authority  of  the 
Church,  about  the  over-observance  of  holy  days,  about  owning 
slaves,  and  speculating,  and  divorcing,  and  leaving  their  prayer- 
meeting  to  go  to  the  ballot,  and  raffling  to  support  the  Gospel.  It 
is  interesting  to  look  back  and  also  look  around  and  see  how  good 
people  have  grown  bewildered  occasionally  and  doubtful,  on  pretty 
plain  things,  and  have  given  Satan  the  benefit  of  the  doubt.  Well, 
the  minister  thinks  that  men  and  women  in  these  confusions, 
cannot  be  jerked  out  of  them  by  a  sudden  application  of  stark 
force.  No,  you  must  toll  them  out.  You  must  lay  down  a  long 
line  of  corn — corn  that  they  like — even  as  partridges  in  the  woods 
are  beguiled  into  snares ; — all  they  see  is  kernels  of  grain,  strung 
out  and  they  follow  on.  In  other  words,  you  must  rather  pare 
down,  or  razee  the  truth,  and  deal  it  out  simply  as  they  are  able  to 
bear  it.  There  is  quite  a  good  deal  of  this  done  in  Christian  pulpits. 
And  it  is  so  easy  to  slip  into  it. 

I  have  now  mentioned  some  of  the  advantages  and  some  of 
the  disadvantages  of  the  minister  in  the  matter  of  veracity.  And  I 
hope  I  have  taken  you  along  far  enough  to  make  the  situation  seem 
an  anxious  one.  It  is  an  anxious  one.  The  ordinary  and  average 
honesty  is  not  enough  for  a  minister.  Of  course  he  is  not  going 
to  tell  lies,  nor  steal,  nor  forge,  nor  murder.  Crimes  like  those 
end  him — and  he  knows  they  do — and  therefore  he  is  not  going  to 
commit  them,  even  if  he  wants  to  (which  he  ordinarily  does  not). 
But  simple  seemliness  and  straight  walking  is  only  the  shell  of 
honesty,  and  this  man  of  God  is  not  a  man  of  God,  unless  he  can 
show  truth  in  his  inward  parts.  So  then  let  me  undertake  a  little 
close  remark. 

I  define  veracity  to  be  a  supreme  intention  to  see  and  describe 
things  as  they  are.  A  supreme  intention  to  see  and  describe  things 
as  they  are  !  Many  see  pretty  well,  who  are  slippery  when  they 
come  to  tell  about  it,  whether  by  word  or  act.  On  the  other  hand, 
many  tell  well — that  is,  what  they  see  they  report  straightforwardly — 
but  then  their  seeing  is  poor.  That  though  may  be  an  intellectual 
fault.  The  poor  seer  may  get  to  heaven ;  the  poor  teller  never 
will.  And  it  is  these  poor  tellers  that  I  am  after  mainly  to-day. 
Stupid  ministers  are  one  thing  ;  dishonest  are  another.  The  stupid 
ones  we  can  get  along  with  (we  have  to,  at  any  rate)  but  the 
dishonest  are  different.      Permit  me  to  give  you  a  rapid  list  of 


YALE    LECTURES.  333 

hindrances  to  exact  seeing,  and  describing.  In  all  seeing  there 
are  two  factors  : — the  seer  and  the  thing  seen.  But  let  us  look  at 
the  seer  and  the  hindrances  to  exactness  that  lie  in  him. 

First. — He  may  be  a  constitutionally  gushing  seer.  Did  you 
never  know  such  ?  They  suffuse  the  whole  creation  with  their  own 
rosiness,  and  report  the  creation  accordingly. 

On  the  other  hand  a  man  may  be  a  cold  seer,  by  nature,  and 
the  creation  that  he  reports  is  by  no  means  the  same  creation  that 
the  gusher  has  just  reported.  But  the  thing  that  interests  me,  as 
set  to  unfold  my  subject,  is  that  neither  of  them  reports  the  actual 
creation.  There  is  a  chronic  inexactness  in  the  statements  of  such 
people,  which  you  must  always  figure  on  and  remorselessly  elimi- 
nate, before  you  can  really  know  anything  from  what  they  say. 

Again,  the  present  transient  mood  of  a  seer  is  likely  to  qualify 
his  perception  and  make  it  inaccurate,  and  that  inaccuracy  must  be 
discounted  in  the  report  he  brings  of  the  object  he  has  observed. 
One  morning  in  December,  1869,  I  mounted  a  hack  with  the  driver 
thereof  and  drove '  from  Naples  to  Pompeii — my  first  visit  to  that 
fascinating  place — and  my  last.  But  the  day  was  cold.  It  had 
snowed.  The  streets  of  the  disentombed  city  were  white  a  little. 
The  dust  flew  too,  on  the  road  out,  March  fashion.  I  was  physic- 
ally miserable.  Therefore  Pompeii  is  substantially  a  blank  in 
my  memory.  It  is  pitiable  that  a  supreme  thing  can  be  made 
to  be' nothing  by  some  grumpiness  in  this  vile  tabernacle  that 
we  have  on  us  for  a  time ;  for  an  uncomfortable  man  is  always 
a  misreporter.  But  if  only  we  are  comfortable  what  may  we  not 
see?  We  can  even  see  things  that  are  not.  What  the  Baths  of 
Caracalla  in  Rome  amount  to  in  fact,  I  do  not  know ;  but  one 
sunny  and  warm  day  in  late  March,  I,  with  a  friend,  climbed  to  the 
top  of  that  great  structure,  and  there,  reclined  and  buried  in  the 
green  growths  on  the  roof,  I  dreamed  and  absorbed  and  blossomed 
for  hours,  thinking  such  reminiscent  thoughts  and  luxuriating  in 
such  imaginings  as  a  man  of  some  sensibility  might,  with  the  his- 
toric city  not  far  away,  and  with  his  own  mortal  body  in  a  state  of 
perfect  warmth  and  perfect  repose  and  contentment — in  a  state  of 
prolonged  purring,  to  express  it  so.  So  now  that  building  and  that 
day  are  not  blanks  in  my  mind.  I  could  make  a  sumptuous  report 
of  them. 

Not  always  though  do  our  moods  come  from  our  bodies.  A 
man's  view  of  a  good  cause  may  be  qualified  and  made  a  practical 


334  YALE   LECTURES. 

lie,  by  some  irritation  he  has  had  sometime  in  connection  withTthat 
cause,  or  with  some  one  engaged  in  its  advocacy. 

A  man's  view  of  the  fitness  of  a  certain  person  for  a  certain 
office,  may  be  quite  wrong  (though  honestly  wrong)  because  that 
candidate  has  happened  to  cross  him  in  some  respect. 

Our  moods  are  numerous  and  spring  from  diverse  sources,  but 
a  mood  is  as  much  a  mischief-maker,  in  the  matter  of  true  seeing, 
as  color-blindness  is,  or  purblindness. 

Again,  the  philosophers  tell  us,  when  they  discuss  the  relativity 
of  knowledge,  that  all  things  show  themselves  to  the  human  eye, 
not  in  their  total  reality,  but  in  so  much  of  their  reality  as  the 
human  eye  is  constitutionally  able  to  get  hold  of.  And  when  they 
say  this,  sometimes  they  say  it  with  a  general  look  on  their  faces 
and  a  suggestiveness  in  the  tones  of  their  voice,  which  is  equivalent 
to  an  additional  piece  of  information  to  the  effect  that  what  we  see 
when  we  look  at  an  object,  is  to  the  realities  stowed  away  and  hid- 
den in  that  object — hidden  forever  very  likely,  from  us — as  one 
leaf  is  to  all  the  leaves  of  the  leafy  world.  There  we  are  again  ! 
Accepting  the  doctrine  of  the  relativity  of  knowledge,  what  a  baby 
report  any  report  we  make  is  !  The  fault  is  not  in  the  object  but 
in  the  observer.  The  object  stands  there  in  its  absolute  bareness, 
offering  itself  to  be  looked  at  through  and  through,  but  it  sarcastic- 
ally suggests  that  it  cannot  furnish  eyes  and  object  both. 

But  even  where  we  are  able  to  get  into  the  interiors '  of  the 
object  considerably,  and  see  it  in  several  aspects  rather  than  in  one, 
we,  for  the  time  being,  are  not  at  the  right  point  of  observation  for 
all  that  many-faced  seeing  as  likely  as  not,  and  cannot  be  ;  and  on 
that  account,  any  report  we  make  must  be  inadequate,  and  in  that 
sense  inaccurate.  This  remark  applies  especially  to  our  contem- 
plation of  religious  truth.  In  the  New  Testament  there  are  many 
references  to  the  resurrection  of  man,  and  the  subsequent  resurrec- 
tion state.  St.  Paul,  in  his  Epistle  to  the  Corinthians,  makes  quite 
an  effort  to  flood  that  subject  with  light  by  his  reasonings  and 
analogies.  Also  by  his  touches  of  exultation  as  he  moves  along,  he 
reveals  the  dimensions  of  the  resurrection  fact  quite  as  much  as  he 
does  by  anything  he  directly  says  about  it.  He,  as  an  inspired 
man,  sees  something  that  we  do  not,  and  by  the  glow  on  his  face 
and  his  joyful  gesticulations,  we  are  made  to  know  how  this  thing 
is  no  small  affair.  So  then,  we  have  a  doctrine  to  the  resurrection. 
We  talk  about  it,  we  preach  it,  we  put  it  into  our  creeds.     But  a 


YALE   LECTURES.  335 

very  powerful  sort  of  relativity  of  human  knowledge  comes  in  here. 
It  is  not  permanently  in,  but  it  is  in  for  the  present.  So  long  as  we 
stay  on  the  earth,  the  earth  is  our  view-point  in  respect  of  the  resur- 
rection. But  the  view  of  the  resurrection  from  here,  compares 
with  the  view  of  it  which  we  shall  have  after  the  resurrection  is 
past,  or  after  we  have  gone  around  to  the  other  side,  as  our  view  of 
a  cloud  when  under  it  compares  with  our  view  when  some  balloon 
has  taken  us  up  and  around,  on  to  the  sky-side  of  that  cloud.  A 
man  looking  up  at  a  cloud  takes  his  oath  that  it  is  dark  and  dismal ; 
a  man  looking  down  on  a  cloud  swears  that  it  is  one  of  the 
brightest  and  most  beautiful  things  he  ever  saw. 

So  much  for  the  power  of  standpoint,  as  determinative  of  per- 
ception, and  of  the  reports  founded  upon  perception. 

And  this  thing  that  I  have  called  standpoint  so  often  as  any 
way  runs  into  and  becomes  identical  with  that  thing  that  I  have 
called  mood  ;  a  person's  mood  at  the  moment  of  observation. 

I  recollect  that  when  our  war  of  the  rebellion  was  on,  twenty  or 
more  years  ago,  the  strong  cursing  in  the  book  of  the  Psalms 
seemed  to  all  loyal  people  to  be  dealt  out  about  right, — none  too 
hot.  In  peace,  such  talk  sounds  severe.  Our  first  feeling  is,  that 
David  and  the  others  permitted  their  emotions  to  speak  up  more 
than  was  necessary.  But  when  our  Southern  brethren  began  to 
shoot  us,  and  we  were  as  indignant  as  ever  was  David,  we  saw  the 
Psalms  more  as  they  are.  Our  changed  mood  was  an  advantage  to 
us  as  interpreters. 

So  when  the  Spirit  of  God  steals  into  the  heart  of  one  of  our 
circle  of  unchristian  children,  and  converts  him,  leaving  the  rest, 
the  doctrine  of  election  seems  a  more  real  thing  than  it  did  when 
we  heard  it  abstractly  discussed  and  proven  by  our  minister. 
Speaking  of  election,  we  should  say  about  it  now  what  we  should 
not  have  said,  save  for  that  thunder  out  of  a  clear  sky,  that  con- 
version in  our  family. 

In  like  manner  the  right  of  a  minister  to  take  part  in  politics 
— a  right  which  we  never  denied,  I  will  suppose — seemed  not  at  all 
what  it  used  to,  the  moment  he  in  the  fervor  of  an  election,  when 
we  were  more  moved  in  our  minds  than  we  ever  were  before,  actu- 
ally took  part — an  influential  part — and  worst  of  all,  took  part  on 
the  side  opposite  to  us.  In  our  abstract  and  judicial  mood  of 
mind,  taking  part  was  one  thing,  in  our  political  mood  of  mind  it 
suddenly  became  another. 


336  YALE  LECTURES. 

Now  Brethren,  I  have  made  a  display  of  these  incertitudes  in 
seeing  things  and  reporting  on  them,  in  order  that  you  may  discover 
what  a  fiery  trial  of  our  honesty  we  are  all  in,  in  this  present  world. 
The  unprincipled  man  lets  these  numberless  forces  shoulder  him 
about  as  they  please,  and  he  sees  things  pretty  much  as  he  happens 
to,  and  when  he  comes  to  describe  them  he  is  equally  loose.  And 
the  principled  man,  ofttimes,  is  net  principled  enough  to  resist  this 
confused  stress  of  forces ;  especially  as  half  of  them  are  particu- 
larly obscure.  These  thousand-and-one  subjective  moods  that 
determine  our  perception  of  this  and  that,  are  very  often  uncon- 
scious moods,  like  a  vessel  headed  straight  towards  port,  with  all 
sails  set,  and  a  comfortable  assurance  in  her  own  mind  that  she 
is  making  the  port ;  when,  in  fact,  a  secret  ocean  current  is  carrying 
her  leagues  and  leagues  away. 

Now,  a  minister,  of  all  men,  is  under  moral  engagement  and 
obligation  to  see  well  and  tell  a  straight  story. 

First,  to  see  well. — To  see  well !  I  rather  think  that,  ordina- 
rily, when  we  speak  of  veracity,  we  do  not  get  back  so  far  as  that. 
Veracity  is  reporting  a  thing  as  we  see  it,  and  that  fulfills  all  right- 
eousness, most  persons  would  say.  But  it  does  not.  We  are 
as  much  bound  to  see  things  as  they  are,  as  we  are  to  report  them 
as  we  see  them.  That  is  the  starting  point  of  veracity ;  to  see  them 
as  they  are.  Right  there,  at  the  root,  that  moral  quality,  honesty, 
begins  to  come  in.  I  have  expounded  the  difficulty  there — the 
complicated  and  awful  difficulty — but  no  matter,  God  entangles  us 
in  difficulties  on  purpose  to  find  whether  we  have  the  integrity  to 
get  through  them.  The  integrity ;  not  the  perspicacity  except 
as  integrity  makes  perspicacity.  No  doubt  our  difficulties  develop 
our  intellects,  and  that  is  one  of  God's  ends  in  letting  difficulties 
try  to  snarl  us.  He  wants  us  to  be  bright.  But  still  more  and 
mainly,  he  wants  us  to  be  honest.  So  he  tempts  us.  He  shows  up 
before  us  all  sorts  of  objects,  in  bewildering  phases.  They  are 
bewildering  in  themselves,  those  objects  are  ;  and  they  are  bewilder- 
ing because  our  moods  and  our  constitutional  idiosyncrasies  do, 
unbeknown  to  ourselves,  drift  us  this  way  and  that,  and  make  us 
like  astronomers  studying  the  sky  through  their  telescope  from  the 
rolling  deck  of  a  ship.  I  think  it  was  Samuel  Johnson — the  great 
Samuel — who  said  that  if  a  child  of  his,  looking  through  the  window, 
remarked  that  there  were  four  objects  out  there,  when  in  fact  there 
were  but  three,  he  would  whip  the  child  ;  so  important  to  any  good 


YALE   LECTURES.  337 

development  did  he  judge  accurate  observation  to  be.  To  say  four 
even,  when  there  are  three,  is  a  demoralization  as  distinct  as  to 
forge  a  complete  lie,  and  say  there  are  none.  But  perhaps  the 
observer  was  simply  mistaken,  you  reply.  He  had  no  right  to  be 
mistaken.  He  was  careless  as  to  whether  he  was  mistaken  or  no  ; 
and  with  only  that  carelessness  to  stand  on,  he  proceeded  to  make 
an  affirmation  outright  and  definite.  There  is  a  play  of  moral 
quality  through  the  whole  business. 

Here  is  a  minister.  He  is  preaching  a  good  many  things. 
Most  of  them  he  has  examined  to  the  full  extent  of  his  faculty 
and  his  opportunity.  But  some  of  them  he  has  not,  (I  will  sup- 
pose) ;  still,  they  are  conventionally  considered  parts  or  items  in  a 
roundabout  and  full-toned  orthodoxy.  Therefore  he  preaches 
them.  Like  the  child  looking  out  of  the  window,  he  says  four,  at  a 
venture.  Four  is  what  he  is  expected  to  say,  and  he  says  it.  I 
will  not  condemn  that  minister  as  a  lost  soul  because  he  has  so 
done ;  but  he  has  tampered  with  himself  in  a  manner  all  the  more 
perilous,  in  that  it  requires  a  little  push  of  analysis  and  acumen  to 
get  at  and  spot  its  essential  turpitude.  Or  if  that  is  too  strong, 
then  say  (more  mildly)  that  his  underpinning  of  character  would 
be  less  worm-eaten  if  he  stopped  doing  such  things.  Perhaps  that 
is  no  milder.  Perhaps  a  worm  in  an  underpinning  is  as  dangerous 
as  a  worm  in  a  living  root.  Most  of  the  demoralizations  of  men,  if 
searched  out,  would  be  found  to  have  their  beginning  in  some  sub- 
conscious, imperceptible  minute  defect  like  that. 

I  have  now  spent  all  the  time  I  can  conveniently  spare  on  that 
primary  and  foundation  matter,  seeing  well,  seeing  exactly,  seeing  a 
thing  as  it  is ; — for  I  have  yet  to  deal  with  veracity  in  the  use  of 
language.  Veracity  in  the  use  of  language  !  That  to  which  the 
term  veracity  is  generally  supposed  to  apply,  particularly  and  prin- 
cipally. A  man  who  makes  a  good  honest  start  at  that  radical 
point,  seeing ;  is  just  the  man  who  wants  the  language  he  uses  in 
giving  an  account  of  his  seeing  to  correspond  to  the  facts  ;  close- 
fit — not  a  grain  overdone,  not  a  grain  underdone.  There  is  no 
intellectual  joy  like  the  joy  of  that  close-fit,  but  the  moral  joy  of  it 
to  a  moral  man  is  still  greater.  That  absolute  rhetorical  veracity 
exhilarates  like  a  play  of  electric  currents  through  one's  bulk  and 
being.  Often,  when  after  labor  or  by  a  stroke  of  spontaneity  I 
have  wedded  word  to  fact,  in  a  match  of  one  to  the  other  as  com- 
plete, self-evident  and  triumphant  as  though  one  had  been  eternally 


338  YALE  LECTURES. 

predestinated  for  the  other,  every  faculty  in  me  has  shouted  for  the 
moment ; — it  is  so  satisfactory  to  have  exactly  the  right  thing  done, 
and  to  have  the  Tightness  stand  out  incontestible.  I  think  that  the 
way  in  which  the  human  mind  coins  words  for  its  thoughts  and  per- 
ceptions, in  a  steady,  copious  run  of  coinage,  without  the  least 
premeditation  or  conscious  anxiety  (more  often  than  any  way,  and 
always  if  inspired  and  vital)  is  one  of  the  most  marvellous  of  things  ; 
and  indeed  no  mean  image,  but  a  finite  duplicate  rather  of  the 
creative  fertility  of  Almighty  God.  As  his  great  energies  teem  and 
teem  and  never  tire,  so  do  we  his  creatures  teem  ;  word  after  word, 
pat  and  full,  exact  and  well-rounded,  the  words  fitting  the  thoughts 
to  the  last  touch  of  fitness  and  the  thoughts  filling  the  words  to  the 
last  touch  of  fullness. 

Veracity  in  the  use  of  language,  shows  itself  in  such  particulars 
as  the  following : 

First, — In  a  burning  desire  to  get  at  the  exact  meaning  of  a 
word  before  we  consent  to  use  it.  It  is  easy  enough  to  heedlessly 
pour  out  words,  flood-like  and  incontinent ;  but  this  is  an  irresponsible 
and  immoral  procedure.  Words  were  not  made  to  toss  about  care- 
lesswise  any  more  than  dynamite  is.  When  an  honest  man  speaks, 
he  pledges  his  honor  to  the  validity  of  the  meanings  which  he  puts 
into  his  expressions ;  and  he  feels  that  he  does,  as  truly  as  he 
pledges  himself  when  he  signs  a  note.  I  want  to  tell  you  of  a  little 
fraud  that  I  committed — only  some  two  years  ago  too,  when  I  was 
old  enough  to  know  better  and  should  have  supposed  myself  man 
enough  not  to  have  done  such  a  deed.  God  found  me  out  in  it 
though,  and  I  do  not  intend  to  do  so  any  more.  I  was  delivering  a 
course  of  Old  Testament  historical  lectures  Sunday  evenings,  and 
was  on  the  career  of  David.  And  having  come  along  so  far  as  the 
death  of  Saul  and  Jonathan,  I  wanted  to  turn  to  a  particular  good 
use  among  the  people,  David's  beautiful  song  of  lamentations  over 
those  two,  beginning: — "The  beauty  of  Israel  is  slain  upon  thy 
high  places" — but  my  good  use  could  be  best  secured  by  accepting 
the  old-fashioned  interpretation  of  that  composition  at  a  certain 
point,  although  I  knew  that  said  interpretation  had  been  attacked 
by  scholars  and  considerably  demolished ;  nevertheless  I  put  on  an 
honest  face  and  turned  in  on  my  confiding  hearers  that  old-fash- 
ioned view ;  muddling  my  conscience  with  the  convenient  off-hand 
thought  that  the  authorities  were  not  agreed  on  the  point  in 
question.     But  providentially,  off  in  one  of  the  pews  there  sat  a 


YALE  LECTURES.  339 

hard-headed  strong  man  from  another  parish,  who  of  late  had  been 
minutely  digging  out  that  whole  history,  and  he  mentioned  to  one  of 
my  parishioners  this  performance  of  mine.  That  parishioner  knew 
he  was  mistaken  of  course,  and  told  him  so.  His  trust  in  my  ability 
and  scholarship  and  other  things,  was  sufficient  to  enable  him  to 
take  a  stout  stand  against  him,  and  in  favor  of  me.  However,  he 
wrote  me  a  note  about  it,  and  then  I  wrote  him  a  note,  telling  him 
that  the  man  was  right,  that  he  had  the  weight  of  authority  on  his 
side.  You  see  I  had  fallen,  but  I  got  up  quick ;  so  soon  as  I  was 
caught,  at  any  rate.  Well,  in  relating  this  incident,  I  have  opened 
quite  a  swarm  of  questions.  For  instance,  the  recent  revisers  of  the 
Bible  have  witched  with  numbers  of  our  old  passages  that  we  have  had 
the  joy  of  quoting  all  our  lives.  Some  passages  they  have  caused 
to  disappear  entirely.  Others  they  have  left  in,  but  not  till  after 
such  an  overhauling  of  their  primeval  supposed  sense,  that  one  feels 
like  a  criminal  if  he  stands  to  that  primeval  sense,  uses  it  in  preach- 
ing, and  says  nothing.  Is  it  as  honest  as  a  minister  of  the  gospel 
should  be,  to  be  reading  from  his  pulpit  an  old  version  whose  little 
infirmities  here  and  there  have  been  so  exposed  ? 

And  this  brings  up  the  whole  subject  of  Biblical  quotation. 
How  far  may  we  use  texts  and  passages  rhetorically,  rather  than 
exactly.  Does  the  Bible  like  to  be  dragged  in  to  assist  oratory 
in  that  way;  even  though  it  be  sacred  oratory?  Is  it  "sacred" 
oratory,  with  these  devices  scattered  along  through  it  ?  And  when 
you  come  to  preach  from  a  text,  may  that  text  be  made  to  do  a 
duty  it  never  thought  of  till  you  got  hold  of  it  and  had  a  present 
and  particular  good  you  wanted  to  accomplish  by  its  teaching.  Of 
course  anybody  can  see  that  we  must  not  stand  up  and  squarely  say 
"  Dearly  Beloved,  this  text  teaches  so  and  so,"  when  it  does  not. 
We  may  say,  "It  suggests  to  me  the  following  twelve  heads,"  and 
then  we  may  go  on  to  make  our  whole  discourse  on  those  twelve 
heads.  There  is  no  lying  in  that ;  but  how  must  that  text  feel  all 
this  while  ?  Doubtless  it  is  flattered  that  an  educated  and  cultivated 
and  religious  man  is  so  crammed  with  suggestions  by  its  humble 
self;  at  the  same  time  must  not  that  text  be  mournfully  remarking 
in  its  own  mind  now  and  then ;  "  But  I  have  a  meaning  of  my  own 
(so  I  always  supposed),  a  God's  meaning;  and  on  the  whole  I 
should  be  pleased  if  you  would  make  a  thirteenth  head  on  that, 
and  let  me  serve  to  that  extent,  as  my  original  self;  and  not  as  a 
mere  suggestor." 


340  YALE   LECTURES. 

These  points  of  equity  are  confusing  to  an  undisciplined  con- 
science, but  to  a  man  who  is  honest  in  every  atom  of  him,  the 
appeal  of  that  Bible  text  is  full  of  pathos. 

Now  you  see  in  a  moment  that  in  order  to  the  truthful  use 
of  language,  we  are  carried  directly  to  philological  and  exegetical 
study.  All  people  would  agree  that  preachers  need  to  be  up  in 
those  studies  as  a  matter  of  information  ;  but  I  say  unto  you  to-day 
it  is  a  matter  of  integrity  also.  What  is  slander?  Well,  one  form 
of  it  is  reporting  that  a  man  said  something  that  he  did  not  say. 
And  why  is  not  the  Bible  slandered  when  some  inaccurate  and 
unexegetical  fumbler  spends  hours  every  week  in  public  discours- 
ings  on  what  the  Bible  says.  Unquestionably  the  Bible  does  say 
many  things  that  he  declares  it  does.  The  general  tone  of  its 
teachings  on  the  principal  topics  of  doctrine  and  life,  he  gets  at. 
But  the  Bible  is  like  a  person.  It  has  in  it,  so  to  speak,  virgin-like 
and  elusive  qualities  and  shades  of  quality  which  must  be  perceived 
in  order  to  a  complete  and  completely  relishable  acquaintance  with 
the  Book.  A  merely  English  scholar  may  get  a  good  deal  from  the 
Bible  ;  but  a  Greek  and  Hebrew  scholar  can  get  more.  Words 
fairly  quiver  with  delight  when  you  hunt  them  out  clear  to  their 
radicals.  When  I  take  my  food  in  a  rather  wholesale  and  bolting 
fashion — so  much  food  in  so  many  minutes — I  taste  it,  certainly,  and 
wish  I  had  more  ;  but  my  tongue  does  not  at  all  reach  those  ultimate 
flavors  of  my  bread  and  my  meat,  wherein  and  whereby,  princi- 
pally, meat  is  meat  and  not  bread,  and  bread  is  bread  and  not 
meat — those  ultimate  flavors  that  the  bread  and  the  meat  do  most 
pride  themselves  on.  It  is  impossible  to  get  the  whole  marrow  of 
Greek  or  Hebrew  or  Latin  thought  in  an  English  rendering  of  it. 
Hebrew  thought  in  an  English  dress,  is  Anglicized-Hebrew  thought 
always — more  or  less.  Thought,  that  essence  of  the  mind,  instinct- 
ively takes  on  a  body  of  language  that  is  surcharged  with  its  own 
idiosyncrasies,  and  any  other  embodiment  would  be  a  misfit  to  a 
degree  and  so  far  not  an  embodiment.  We  should  not  say  that 
any  living  thing  was  embodied,  when  some  sort  of  externality  was 
mechanically  put  upon  it.  No,  embodiment  proper  is  the  unem- 
bodied  vitally  and  therefore  characteristically  expressed. 

So  then  our  very  veracity  forces  us  to  philology,  to  exegesis,  to 
profound  interpretation.  If  we  intentionally  misrepresent  meanings, 
we  are  liars,  plain  as  day.  But  if  we  misrepresent  meanings  through 
carelessness,  or  through  laziness,  it  shows  that  we  have  in  us  the 


YALE  LECTURES.  341 

making  of  a  liar.  We  are  willing  to  make  statement  after  statement 
that  we  have  never  taken  the  trouble  to  verify.  We  are  leaving  a 
large  part  of  the  significance  of  our  Bible — many  a  savory  term, 
phrase,  turn  and  idiom,  unused  and  undetected.  It  is  not  right, 
I  say. 

Secondly. — Veracity  in  the  use  of  language  shows  itself  in  the 
avoidance  of  overstatement — not  to  say  understatement.  Over- 
statement comes  :  From  a  real  desire  to  lie  :  From  an  innocent 
over-rosiness  of  mental  constitution  from  the  womb.  From  an 
innocent  over-endowment  of  sensibility.  From  ignorance,  often. 
From  a  religious  desire  to  make  a  strong  impression  and  do  good. 
Finally,  and  omitting,  doubtless,  some  causes ;  from  an  over-done 
concentration  on  the  particular  object  which  we  are  trying  for  the 
moment  to  report.  Please  grant  me  a  little  pause  on  that  last — 
thus  : 

Each  object  of  thought  is  variously  related  to  other  objects  of 
thought,  and  that  one  object  cannot  be  seen  accurately  and  accu- 
rately reported  except  as  its  numerous  relations  are  perceived  and 
weighed,  and  duly  let  in  with  their  influence.     For  example  : 

Now  it  is  a  habit  of  multitudes  of  minds — preachers  and  all 
sorts — to  contemplate  things  unrelationally.  It  is  the  curse  of 
theology — one  curse — that  so  many  fail  to  contemplate  its  several 
momenta  systematically.  It  is  the  curse  of  preaching — one  curse — 
that  the  men,  so  many  of  them,  sharpen  their  attention  right  down 
to  the  one  truth  or  topic  they  happen  to  be  on  for  the  moment. 
It  is  the  justice  of  God  that  they  have  up  I  will  say,  and  if  you  had 
never  heard  of  God  before  you  would  conclude  that  justice  is  all 
there  is  of  him. 

I  know  it  is  one  of  the  inherent  and  necessary  infirmities  of 
any  statement  of  a  truth,  that  you  isolate  it  more  or  less  from  other 
truths.  Formulation  is  simply  a  setting  of  boundaries  around 
the  thing  you  formulate ;  and  those  boundaries  would  not  be 
such  if  they  did  not  fence  off  that  thing  to  a  degree  from  all  those 
things  to  the  which  it  is  in  fact  related.  If  you  say — "God  is 
Justice  !" — you  have  selected  a  single  attribute  of  God  from  out  of 
his  many  attributes,  brought  it  into  the  foreground,  magnified  it, 
lifted  it  for  the  moment  out  of  its  real  place  in  the  organism  of  his 
attributes  and  committed  an  exaggeration,  a  temporary  exaggeration. 
Formulation  is  exaggeration,  always.  If  you  preach  on  an  attribute 
of  God  you  cannot,  at  the  same  time,  and  in  that  single  half-hour, 


342  YALE   LECTURES. 

preach  on  his  every  other  attribute,  and  thus  avoid  disproportion. 
No,  you  must  bear  down  on  the  thing  in  hand,  and  accept  what 
disproportion  may  occur.  And  then  at  some  other  time  you  must 
have  God's  Love  for  your  topic,  and  bear  down  on  that.  And  so 
on.  But  in  all  this  your  specific  bearing  down,  you  may  tone  your 
statements  and  reduce  exaggeration  to  a  minimum  by  being  your- 
self a  relational  thinker — a  man  accustomed  to  recollect  that  God  is 
manifold,  made  up  of  several  great  powers  in  magnificent  equilib- 
rium and  co-ordination.  The  equilibrium  and  co-ordination  of  the 
forces  of  the  created  universe  is  but  his  harmony  of  living,  pro- 
jected and  made  visible.  A  being  like  Him  when  he  came  to  cre- 
ate, could  not  do  otherwise  than  have  his  universe  like  unto  himself. 
I  repeat,  the  way  to  reduce  exaggeration  to  a  minimum  is  to  make 
yourself  a  relational  thinker.  One  of  the  chief  objects  of  education 
is  to  get  young  men  into  this  relational  habit.  A  man  is  not  educa- 
ted till  he  be  brought  to  that.  One  of  the  tokens  whereby  you  can 
tell  a  great  man  from  a  man  little  and  scrappy,  is  that  the  latter 
takes  truth  in  scraps,  or  single  phases ;  and  when  he  speaks  gets 
right  down  on  his  scrap  and  cackles  with,  all  his  might,  while  the 
great  man  handles  truth  integrally.  He,  as  much  as  the  lesser 
thinker,  is  compelled  by  the  necessity  of  the  case  to  expound  truth 
one  phase  at  a  time  and  in  that  way  exaggerate.  Nevertheless  you 
will  hear  in  all  he  says  on  that  phase  a  sound  as  from  other  phases. 
Particularly  in  the  moderation  of  his  statements  will  you  hear  that 
sound.  His  language  is  not  pushed  into  the  extreme  possible 
intensity  of  language.  While  he  shows  that  he  has  interest  in  his 
theme,  he  shows  that  he  has  heard  of  other  themes.  Focus  the  entire 
vital  heat  of  your  body  on  some  single  square  inch  of  your  body, 
and  you  have  an  interesting  inflammation,  an  inflammation  which 
attracts  much  more  attention  than  forty  whole  bodies,  with  their  heat 
uniformly  distributed.  And  in  like  manner  a  preacher  who  accumu- 
lates his  entire  energy  and  fire  on  the  one  truth  that  he  is  discussing, 
and  thinks  of  nothing  else,  may  set  the  people  agape  more  than  the 
full-globed,  all-comprehending  man,  whose  heat  on  this  and  that 
does  not  proceed  to  the  inflammatory  point,  because  he  has  a  fervid 
sense  of  numerous  other  truths  and  themes. 

You  have  a  good  illustration  of  this  that  I  am  now  trying  to  set 
forth  in  the  mental  temperance  of  a  statesman  or  public  man,  who 
is  historically  informed  and  cultured ;  his  temperance  in  the  midst 
of  the  flow  and  passion  of  present  events,  as  contrasted  to  the 


YALE    LECTURES.  343 

vehemency,  overaction  and  overstatement  of  the  public  man  who, 
as  knowing  nothing  of  history,  has  nothing  with  which  to  compare 
the  present.  You  will  hear  this  last,  saying: — "The  treason  of 
Jefferson  Davis  was  the  greatest  crime  since  the  crucifixion  of  the 
Son  of  God" — "  Ulysses  S.  Grant  is  the  greatest  general  since  Julius 
Csesar" — and  like  ear-catching  utterances.  "This  presidential 
election  is  the  most  important  one  since  the  foundation  of  the  gov- 
ernment ;  if  we  lose  it,  the  cause  of  free  government  is  set  back  a 
hundred  years ;  "  and  so  on.  Now  if  this  man  only  knew  anything 
that  has  occurred  between  the  date  of  the  crucifixion  and  the  last 
election,  he  would  be  more  entitled  to  make  these  stunning  general- 
izations ;  but  he  does  not  know.  Perhaps  some  of  these  broad  and 
impressive  things  that  he  says  are  true,  but  he  does  not  know  that 
they  are.     He  is  too  ignorant  historically  for  that. 

Neither  does  that  denominationalist  who  magnifies  a  pulpit 
orator  of  his  own  persuasion  as  the  chief  pulpit  power  of  the 
Nineteenth  Century,  know  much  probably  of  the  pulpit  giants 
outside  of  his  own  circle  and  his  own  land. 

The  truth  is,  all  persons  and  things  and  truths  are  truly  rated 
only  by  those  who  are  in  possession  of  the  large  measures  of  history. 
Exaggeration  is  the  child  of  ignorance.  Exaggeration  comes  of  an 
isolated  and  unrelational  contemplation  of  the  objects  of  thought. 

But  Gentlemen,  there  is  a  form  of  recoil  from  exaggeration,  on 
which  I  ask  you,  so  long  as  you  live,  to  lay  your  rather  undivided 
contempt.  The  moderation,  the  non-gushing  habit  of  a  wide- 
minded  thinker,  scholar  and  man  of  information,  is  a  truly  respect- 
able and  imposing  thing,  as  I  have  already  implied.  His  considerate 
diction  and  his  tranquil  argument  go  home  with  their  whole  force. 
You  know  the  man,  and  deduct  not  one  ounce  from  his  statement. 
Even  when  his  diction  is  really  tame,  as  sometimes  happens,  by 
reason  of  his  mortal  fear  of  excess,  you  feel  that  an  occasional  ice- 
berg in  the  midst  of  the  general  inflammatory  condition  of  human 
thought,  is  a  force  in  favor  of  sanity  and  repose ;  and  you  do  not 
mind  running  your  own  craft  with  her  coppers  all  hot  in  under  the 
shadow  and  wholesome  chill  of  that  solid  mountain  of  ice.  Also 
when  your  cool  man,  by  reason  of  his  many-sided  knowledge,  is 
made  to  be  inordinately  prudential  and  wavering,  so  that  he  drops 
out  of  the  practical  push  of  life,  you  recollect  again  his  value  in 
reducing  the  fierce  temperature  of  the  creation,  and  are  thankful. 
Moreover  if  his  prudentialism,  and  his  unaffirmative  or  mildly  affirm- 


344  YALE   LECTURES. 

ative  tone  extends  even  to  moral  questions,  so  that  his  yea  and  nay 
are  not  wholly  yea  or  nay,  but  a  little  of  both ;  as  was  supposed  to 
be  the  case  with  our  great  Daniel  Webster,  in  some  respects,  thirty 
or  more  years  ago ;  still,  in  the  midst  of  the  frantic  positiveness  of 
multitudes  who  are  positive  in  inverse  ratio  to  their  information 
and  their  sense  of  the  totality  of  things,  it  refreshes  you  to  see  an 
extreme  man  who  is  extreme  in  the  direction  of  tranquillity  and 
considerateness. 

But  I  cannot  say  so  much  in  praise  of  that  affected  moderation 
which  we  sometimes  see — that  refusal  to  be  absolutely  concluded 
and  enthusiastic  in  respect  of  anything,  which  some  persons  put  on. 
They  put  it  on  and  there  is  where  the  contemptibleness  of  the 
thing  comes  in.  They  have  no  all-sided  information  and  all-sided 
habit  of  thought,  which  moderates  them  ;  but  they  moderate  them- 
selves intentionally  and  deliberately,  because  to  be  moderate  is  so  like 
those  unexcited  and  well-poised  men  and  women  who  are  informed 
and  thoughtful.  When  I  first  visited  the  old  world  and  saw  certain 
first  things  over  there,  I  was  much  moved ;  but  I  had  with  me  as  a 
temporary  companion,  a  young  Englishman,  to  me  a  stranger,  up 
from  London  on  his  country  vacation,  who  sat  in  the  same  beautiful 
ruined  Abbey  that  was  near  drowning  me  in  a  certain  sort  of 
emotion,  and  serenely  nibbled  his  lunch.  He  was  not  hungry  (we 
had  just  had  our  breakfast)  but  neither  was  he  hungry  for  the 
Abbey ;  and  as  between  the  two,  it  was  much  more  genteel  to  eat 
and  not  let  the  Abbey  run  away  with  him,  than  to  imitate  me  and 
let  it  out  that  he  never  before  saw  an  Abbey  in  the  beauty  of  hun- 
dreds of  years  of  decline,  and  so  advertise  his  own  greenness.  The 
gentility  of  indifferentism  ! — that  is  what  I  want  you  to  despise. 
If  you  are  so  completely  informed  about  Abbeys  that  you  cannot 
learn  anything  more  in  that  line,  and  if  you  have  been  daily  rubbing 
against  Abbeys  from  the  moment  you  were  born,  and  on  that 
account  are  more  bewitched  with  your  lunch  than  with  the  moss- 
mantled  pile ;  why  go  on  and  eat ; — that  is  honest,  and  to  that 
extent  it  is  respectable.  But  if  you  are  as  unpracticed  in  Abbeys  as 
is  the  over-flowing  Yankee  man  at  your  side,  and  devote  yourself  to 
your  lunch  simply  to  lie,  and  notify  him  that  you  are  not  so  much 
of  a  fool  as  he  (which  is  just  what  millions  do)  then  there  is  noth- 
ing respectable  about  it.  To  be  green  is  no  discredit  necessarily 
(though  it  is  a  misfortune)  but  to  be  untruthful  is  a  great  discredit. 
Sometimes  even  young  men  and  young  women  assume  this  gen- 


YALE  LECTURES.  345 

teel  indifference  to  all  things,  whereof  I  speak.  When  a  mature 
person  puts  on  indifference,  we  may  be  deceived  by  him  at  first. 
Possibly  the  man  is  as  informed  and  experienced  and  as  staled  by 
experience  as  he  appears  to  be ;  but  as  to  these  young  people  we 
know  better  right  off.  They  have  not  been  in  the  world  so  long, 
and  traveled  about  so  much  and  so  deeply  entered  into  all  sorts  of 
things,  that  a  fine  landscape  cannot  flush  them,  and  a  fine  oration, 
or  concert,  or  picture  is  a  weariness  to  their  souls  ;  and  a  fascinating 
human  character  has  no  fascination,  they  have  encountered  such  a 
glut  of  them.  No  ;  they,  keeping  cool  as  they  do,  are  little  hum- 
bugs— and  plain  humbugs. 

Is  it  exaggeration  to  oversee  and  overstate  : — to  wreck  one's 
native  tongue  in  trying  to  express  one's  strong  impressions  ;  as  some 
young  gentlewomen  are  malignantly  accused  of  doing — but  is  it  not 
also  exaggeration  to  purposely  and  guilefully  cultivate  languor,  ennui, 
and  an  air  as  though  you  had  seen  everything  there  is  to  see,  and 
sampled  it,  and  engulfed  yourself  in  satiety  by  much  sampling? 
Is  it  not  exaggeration  to  profess  and  pretend  to  the  moderation  of 
the  many-sided  observer  and  thinker?  Is  it  veracity  in  the  use  of 
language,  to  call  a  whirlwind  "elegant"  and  an  avalanche  "a  nice 
thing"  and  a  magnificent  sunset  "a  rather  pretty  scene"  and  a 
Gen  Gordon  shut  up  in  Egypt,  and  oblivious  of  everything  save 
God  and  duty,  "too  lovely  for  anything  !"  Are  not  these  diminu- 
tives— these  hypocritical  diminutives,  lies.  If  they  had  in  them 
only  the  infirmity  of  inexactness  they  would  be  inveracious  and  a 
sort  of  slander — for  no  one  is  entitled  to  apply  to  things  that  are  in 
reality  so  overwhelming,  such  incommensurate,  petty  and  miserable 
adjectives.  But  when  these  adjectives  are  selected  for  a  hypocritical 
purpose,  they  contain  a  second  immorality. 

O  !  how  good  it  is  to  get  out  of  all  this  feebleness  and  imposi- 
tion, and  out  of  real  indifferentism  with  its  tamed-down  language 
and  its  unflushed  face,  into  the  outrightness,  rest  and  self-commitment 
of  Shakespeare,  and  Hebrew  prophets,  and  imprecating  Psalmists 
who  knew  the  difference  between  Babylon  and  Jerusalem  and  did 
not  doubt  that  God  also  knew  the  difference  ! — to  get  away  from 
that  everlasting  balancing  of  probabilities  in  the  moral  field,  which 
emasculates  a  man's  affirmatives  and  his  negatives  too — to  be  out  of 
it  into  the  clear  sight  and  the  perpendicular  faith  even  of  such 
whole-hearted  haters,  and  un-Addisonian  rhetoricians,  as  Thomas 
Carlyle,  and  Dr.  South,  and  John  Milton,  in  some  of  his  prose 
23 


346  YALE   LECTURES. 

utterances  ;  and  many  another  utterly  resolved  and  vehement  soul. 
Of  course  no  extreme  can  be  defended,  but  as  between  the  lacka- 
daisical on  the  one  side  and  the  over-rugged  on  the  other ;  as 
between  Hercules  and  Nancy;  as  between  strength,  vision  and 
fresh  sensibility  exaggerated,  and  the  exaggeration  of  diminutives, 
indifferentism,  pretense,  and  weakliness,  can  any  reasonable  mortal 
hesitate  ? 

Now  in  some  pulpits  it  is  Nancy  that  you  hear,  and  not  Hercu- 
les. It  is  not  Miss  Nancy,  but  alas  !  it  is  Mr.  Nancy.  First,  he 
thinks  it  would  be  unphilosophical  to  warm  up  and  say  something. 
The  true  way  is  to  put  in  the  pros  and  cons,  and  when  you  get  them 
all  in  to  just  stand  in  them  chin-deep,  and  look  helpless.  This 
preacher  has  reduced  dubiousness  to  a  fine  art.  Doubtless  he  has 
escaped  out  of  exaggeration,  but  he  has  not  landed  anywhere. 
Neither  has  he  landed  his  people  anywhere.  In  the  next  place  he 
abates  his  diction  to  correspond  to  the  neutralism  of  his  thought. 
It  is  proper  and  pale,  and  inoffensive  and  unpotential,  and  void  of 
positive  verity.  An  adjective  with  a  real  swelter  in  it  would  con- 
vulse him.  Doubtless  there  are  many  sweltering  realities  in  the 
Book  and  Providence  of  God,  and  in  human  life,  which  ought  not 
to  be  formulated  at  all  unless  in  terms  correspondingly  sultry ;  but 
this  man  is  in  the  moral  bewilderment  of  the  idea  that  a  thing 
understated  is  not  wronged  and  therefore,  to  be  on  the  safe  side  he 
tones  down  his  utterance  beyond  the  facts. 

To  be  on  the  safe  side  !  Well,  Gentlemen,  as  my  final  contri- 
bution to  your  enlightenment  to-day,  I  will  draw  out  here  a  recipe 
for  keeping  on  the  safe  side.  Are  you  afraid  you  shall  seem  more 
interested  in  the  things  you  describe  than  the  real  worth  of  those 
things  will  justify?  Are  you  afraid  you  shall  seem  more  orthodox 
than  you  are,  more  pious  than  you  are,  more  fascinated  with  each 
parishioner  than  any  mortal  of  any  discrimination  can  be  with  some 
of  them,  more  emphatic  all  around  than  the  facts  will  warrant? 

Well,  listen.  As  regards  the  truths  we  are  called  to  preach, 
and  the  human  and  divine  interests  we  are  set  to  conserve  and  ad- 
vance ;  thank  God  over-emphasis  is  not  possible.  Not  to  emphasize 
them  and  make  everything  ring  when  we  discuss  them,  is  to  imitate 
that  man  referred  to  who  spoke  of  a  hurricane  as  "a  nice  thing," 
and  of  God's  vice-regent  in  the  Egyptian  desert  with  the  hosts 
of  Hell  surging  at  his  gates  day  and  night,  as  "just  lovely."  Let 
no  preacher  practically  disparage  the  things  whereof  he  speaks,  by 


YALE  LECTURES.  347 

speaking  of  them  faintly  and  in  a  small  way.  They  are  not  small, 
and  he  need  not  be  when  he  handles  them. 

There  is  no  difficulty  there.  The  lawyers  and  the  doctors  do 
not  have  just  the  advantage  that  we  do  at  that  point.  The  realities 
to  which  they  give  themselves  are  pretty  great,  and  they  may  put  in 
their  energies  accordingly;  but  ours  are  much  greater.  We  have 
undertaken  to  co-work  with  the  Son  of  God  in  the  spiritual  salvation 
of  the  world,  to  fill  up  (O  !  searching  thought  !)  "to  fill  up  that 
which  is  lacking  of  the  afflictions  of  Christ,  for  the  sake  of  the 
Church  which  is  his  body ;"  not  by  physical  endurances  necessarily 
or  mainly,  but  by  entering  into  the  fellowship  of  his  spiritual 
anxieties  and  sufferings,  which  spiritual  sufferings  of  his  are  the 
pivotal  point  of  his  mediatorship,  the  point  of  ultimate  pressure 
when  he  bore  the  sin  of  the  whole  world.  If  a  lawyer  gets  a  case 
involving  a  few  millions,  he  considers  that  he  has  a  great  case,  and 
he  moves  into  it  with  all  his  powers,  and  his  entire  argument  palpi- 
tates with  the  heart-beat  of  those  millions,  while  neither  judge  nor 
jury  look  upon  it  as  anything  unseemly  or  disproportionate  if  his 
language  seems  to  say  continually  : — "  This  is  a  matter  of  millions." 
Well,  let  us  preachers  talk  as  though  we  had  millions  in  the  case. 

But  as  to  that  recipe.     Here  it  is. 

If  a  man  is  substantially  orthodox,  and  substantially  religious, 
and  substantially  resolved  to  save  his  every  parishioner,  then  he 
himself  is  saved  forever  and  utterly  from  all  kinds  of  excessive 
action  and  speech. 

I  read  in  an  English  newspaper  of  a  gentleman  in  London,  a 
Swiss  gentleman  of  much  character  and  ability,  but  of  a  curious 
negligence  in  keeping  himself  personally  clean.  He  began  to  be  ailing 
in  a  way  that  he  did  not  understand  and  he  sought  the  counsel  of  an 
eminent  physician,  who  knew  his  peculiarities.  And  this  physician 
wrote  out  an  uncommonly  particularized  and  professional  prescrip- 
tion for  him; — which  he  carefully  read  and  then  said:  "Why, 
Doctor,  I  do  not  see  that  this  is  anything  more  or  less  than  taking 
a  bath."  "Well,  it  is  open  to  that  objection,"  replied  the  Doctor. 
"It  is  open  to  that  objection." 

And  my  recipe  is  similar  to  that.  I  introduced  it  with  some 
pomposity,  as  though  I  were  opening  a  brand  new  box  of  wisdom, 
but  in  reality  it  is  as  old-fashioned  and  tame  as  taking  a  bath.  I 
simply  say  : — My  Dear  Young  Brethren,  do  you  just  be  good  men, 
and  then  you  may  speak  and  act,  orthodoxly,  piously,  and  with 


348  YALE  LECTURES. 

pastoral  affection.  There  will  be  no  exaggeration  and  hypocrisy  of 
exaggeration  in  it.  But  out  of  you  (as  the  Holy  Scriptures  intimate), 
shall  flow  veracities  like  rivers  of  living  water. 

Now  notice,  I  do  not  insist  that  you  shall  be  good,  by  a  good- 
ness such  as  only  one  minister  in  ten  thousand  reaches,  before  you 
shall  let  yourself  be  a  preacher  or  a  pastor  at  all.  Of  course  that 
one  man  in  ten  thousand  is  the  very  man  you  must  try  to  be — it 
were  shameful  to  aim  at  anything  less — but  the  presumption  is  that 
you  will  not  be  he.  You  will  be  more  than  you  would  be  if  you 
did  not  strive  to  be  he,  but  the  Chances  that  you  will  reach  to  his 
stature  are  nine  thousand  nine  hundred  and  ninety-nine  to  one.  A 
discouraging  way  to  state  it,  but  we  want  to  get  at  the  facts. 

Well,  as  extreme  saintliness  is  possible  to  you,  but  extremely 
improbable  (according  to  those  figures),  I  advise  you  to  make  sure 
of  a  decent  average  of  goodness  among  that  multitudinous  nine 
thousand  and  over ;  and  on  that  as  a  working  basis  rest  your  min- 
istry down,  and  go  on.  As  your  years  multiply  and  your  spiritual 
strivings  multiply,  and  you  approximate  that  eminent  and  solitary 
divine  just  mentioned,  you  can  lift  your  ministry,  your  preaching 
and  your  pastoring  to  square  with  the  new  facts.  If  your  preach- 
ing and  pastor-work  advances  faster  than  you  advance  toward 
yonder  eminent  saint,  that  is  inveracity — the  thing  I  am  lecturing 
against — but  if  you  advance  your  talk,  and  your  deeds,  and  your 
asking  your  people  about  their  families,  only  and  precisely  as  you 
yourself  do  interiorly  get  on,  that  is  exactness  before  God  and  man 
and  before  your  own  conscience.  Do  that,  and  you  can  roll  your- 
self as  a  sweet  morsel  under  your  own  tongue,  all  the  while.  And 
you  can  do  that.  Theoretically,  you  can  be  the  one  minister  in  ten 
thousand,  but  with  ten  thousand  figures,  save  one,  against  you,  your 
theoretical  possibility  is  mainly  a  beautiful  object  of  contemplation. 
But  to  be  a  good  man  simply,  is  practicable.  You  can  have  a  sharp 
and  effective  conscience.  You  can  have  religious  feelings.  You  can 
have  communion  with  God.  You  can  have  the  graces  of  the  Holy 
Spirit.  I  will  not  stop  to  name  those  graces,  but  you  can  have 
them.  And  you  can  have  in  you  a  daily  steadfast  push  to  do 
your  duty.  And  if  you  get  all  those  plain  and  feasible  things, 
you  are  a  man  worth  having  in  any  parish — city  or  country. 

And  then  as  to  that  ofttimes  pretty  difficult  matter,  the  having 
an  enormous  interest  in  every  pew-holder,  both  temporal  and  spirit- 
ual, I  observe  : 


YALE   LECTURES.  349 

First. — That  there  are  undeniable  differences  in  pew-holders, 
which  differences  not  to  see  were  unintellectual  and  inveracious. 
Some  of  these  persons  it  were  the  work  of  a  lifetime  to  warm  up  to, 
particularly  if  you  keep  in  mind  their  characteristic  imperfections. 
By  dropping  those  and  making  believe  that  they  have  no  imperfec- 
tions you  may  embrace  them  with  a  degree  of  heartiness  : — but  it 
is  better  to  take  men  just  as  they  are,  and  accurately  size  the 
dimensions  of  the  problem  and  the  job  you  have  to  handle.  Let 
us  know  the  worst. 

It  would  seem  then — taking  the  matter  as  far  as  we  have  now 
got  along  in  it — it  would  seem  that  a  minister,  an  honest  and  dis- 
cerning minister,  simply  cannot  treat  his  whole  parish  alike.  He 
may  treat  them  alike  in  all  ways  of  practical  kindness,  but  when 
you  come  to  the  endearments  of  personal  intercourse,  the  melting 
right  down  on  one's  neck,  so  to  say ;  why  he  cannot.  He  must 
select.  Even  Jesus  knew  the  difference  between  Herod  and  Pilate 
and  Mary  of  Bethany — knew  it  and  marked  it. 

But  let  us  rise  a  little  now,  and  light  up  this  terrible  matter, 
by  a  second  remark,  which  does  light  it  up,  and  let  the  minister  out 
into  a  plain  and  good  path. 

Our  specific  and  characteristic  relation  as  ministers  to  our 
congregation  is  religious  and  not  social.  To  be  sure  sociality  comes 
in,  incidentally,  and  may  be  very  sweet,  just  as  when  we  go  a-fish- 
ing,  it  is  necessary,  and  may  be  refreshing,  to  get  down  to  and 
perhaps  into  the  same  water  with  the  fish.  The  fish  are  pleased 
and  we  are  pleased  very  likely.  But  that  is  not  what  we  are  there 
for.  No  ;  we  are  there  to  catch  them.  If  their  being  pleased  to 
have  us  in  the  water  with  them,  makes  it  easier  for  us  to  catch  them 
(as  it  probably  does),  it  is  all  right;  but  pleasure — either  in  them 
or  in  us — is  not  our  end. 

Well,  the  moment  a  minister  disengages  his  end  or  aim  from 
sociality,  and  everything  else,  and  bears  right  down  to  the  personal 
salvation  of  these  men  and  women,  the  solemn  question  whether  he 
can  bring  himself  to  really  enjoy  falling  on  their  necks,  and  on  the 
neck  of  Herod  just  the  same  as  on  the  neck  of  John  or  Mary — 
that  question  subsides.  He  does  not  care  whether  he  can  or  not. 
He  loves  them  all,  as  the  purchase  of  the  Lord  Jesus ;  and  the 
more  it  seems  unlikely  he  can  ever  love  this  one  and  that  one  of 
them  on  natural  principles,  they  are  so  faulty  and  disagreeable,  the 
more  intensely  is  he  drawn  to  them  in  spiritual  affection.     Just 


350  YALE  LECTURES. 

think  of  Mr.  Moody  standing  before  a  great  assembly  of  roughs  in 
low  London  or  low  New  York  !  A  steaming  witch's  cauldron 
were  not  more  repulsive  to  every  moral  sense  and  every  physical 
sense.  But  this  very  repulsiveness  is  what  attracts  Moody  to  them 
infinitely.  I  do  not  doubt  that  the  man,  any  time,  on  a  square  au- 
thentic challenge,  would  die  for  the  most  far-gone  scoundrel  among 
them ;  and  do  it  joyfully.  Let  a  minister  once  get  that  affection 
into  him,  the  religious  affection,  the  true  affection  of  his  holy 
office,  and  it  transfigures  all  his  Herod  pew-holders  before  his  eyes. 
— Yes,  the  beauty  of  him  who  died  for  these  Herods  is  imputed  to 
them,  and  he  sees  them  in  the  glory  of  that  ideal  character  to  which 
by  the  redeeming  grace  of  God  they  may  come. 


HIGH-HEARTEDNESS  IN  THE 
MINISTRY. 


My  brethren,  it  is  one  of  the  best  blessings  to  be  permitted  to 
be  a  Christian  minister.  Permitted  by  your  personal  make-up  ;  per- 
mitted by  your  circumstances  ;  permitted  by  the  favorable  voice  of 
the  Church  ;  and  permitted  by  the  sufficiently  clear  call  of  your  God, 
delivered  to  you  by  the  Holy  Ghost  operating  in  your  consciousness. 
With  what  a  solid  and  good  feeling,  now,  I  give  to  you  that  testi- 
mony, founded  on  what  little  I  myself  have  experienced  and  upon 
a  considerable  observation  of  the  ministerial  class.  In  fact,  I  do 
not  see  how  a  man  could  consent  to  stand  here  and  speak  in  these 
courses  of  lectures  at  all,  if  he  did  not  have  that  feeling  about  our 
vocation.  I  think  your  honest  faces  down  there,  looking  at  him, 
would  make  him  blush  at  his  own  hypocrisy  should  he  try  it. 

However,  there  is  slag  in  almost  everything.  This  is  a  world  of 
slag.  Slag  came  in,  when  Adam  went  out  of  paradise  and  it  is 
here  yet.  And  so  there  naturally  come  into  our  work  some  things, 
and  some  things  are  often  allowed  to  come  in  when  there  is  no  need 
of  it,  which  tend  to  kill  enthusiasm  in  the  minister ;  so  that  you  can 
actually  see  scattered  instances  of  them,  who  started  out  with  fresh- 
ness, determination  and  expectancy,  but  have  gradually  sunk  into 
routine,  dignity,  decorum  and  unhopefulness.  They  are  not  de- 
moralized, in  the  sense  of  being  immoral,  these  that  I  have  in  mind. 
They  have  not  lapsed  from  the  truth.  Their  trumpet,  what  trumpet 
they  have,  gives  no  uncertain  sound.  They  move  through  the 
circle  of  their  duties  with  the  punctuality  of  a  chronometer.  Their 
long  professional  service  has  stamped  their  personal  appearance 
and  demeanor,  so  that  they  are  eminently  respectable  men  to 
meet  and  look  at.     And  they  will  keep  on  in  their  appointed  round 


352  YALE  LECTURES. 

till  their  years  end,  and  will  have  some  conventional  scripture  to 
speak  for  them,  on  their  tombstone.  But  they  are  not  enthusiastic. 
I  do  not  mean  gushing,  but  enthusiastic.  Some  of  God's  ministers 
are  as  chirping  at  sixty  or  seventy  years  of  age,  as  they  were  when 
they  began.  They  have  found  nothing  in  the  courses  of  their  work 
to  make  them  humdrum.  But  these  others  have.  And  now,  what 
is  it  that  they  have  found  ?  Just  what  the  chipper  ones  have  found, 
in  many  respects. 

For  instance,  when  they  began  to  be  preachers,  they  supposed 
that  if  they  made  good  arguments,  before  a  reasonable  congregation, 
and  quoted  good  scriptures  and  closed  their  discourse  always  with 
a  suitable,  well-meant,  unimpeachable  application  of  their  subject, 
then  all  those  reasonable  human  beings  would  be  convinced  and  act 
accordingly ;  but  behold,  as  often  as  anyway,  when  they  preached 
there  was  no  particular  sign  that  anybody  was  convinced.  They, 
the  people,  listened  to  their  sensible  and  warm-hearted  young  man, 
and  were  glad  they  had  secured  such  a  promising  minister,  at  a  price 
that  they  were  able  to  pay,  but  as  for  proceeding  to  be  converted, 
or  to  be  perfectly  sanctified,  they  did  not.  Well,  if  this  discomfit- 
ure had  been  for  one  Sunday  only,  the  man  could  have  lived  through 
it ;  but  lo,  it  kept  on.  By  and  by,  it  began  to  occur  to  him  that  the 
law  of  Christian  preaching  might  be,  that  it  does  not  convert  every 
soul  instantly.  Then  he  remembered  that,  in  the  School  of  Divinity, 
he  had  been  taught  how  the  heart  of  man  is  depraved  and  unwilling 
and  hard  to  melt  down,  and  so  on.  He  recollected  too,  what  he  had 
heard  many  times,  but  never  thought  of,  that  the  most  successful 
ministers  who  ever  lived,  had  more  defeats  than  successes  in  this 
very  matter  of  souls  saved.  Whitefield,  Moody,  Wesley  leave  a 
hundred  times  more  people  unconverted  than  they  convert,  in  the 
places  and  mass-meetings  where  they  speak.  And  as  though  to 
indicate  to  them  that  they  must  all  expect  just  that,  it  is  related  of 
Jesus  himself  that  whenever  he  spoke  to  men,  the  listening  multi- 
tude divided,  some  saying  yes  and  some  saying  no ;  and  divided  in 
no  middle  line  ;  moreover,  the  result  being,  even  as  Jesus  expressed 
it :  "Many  are  called,  but  few  chosen." 

It  seems  strange  that  a  person  can  live  twenty  to  thirty  years  in 
the  world,  go  through  College,  spend  three  years  in  a  theological 
Seminary,  hear  a  good  many  valuable  lectures  from  a  series  of  plain- 
spoken  and  warning  men  ;  and  yet  commence  to  be  a  preacher  with 
no  practical  sense  of  this  thing  that  I  am  now  telling ;  so  that  he  is 


YALE  LECTURES.  353 

disappointed  and  chilled  when  his  charges  from  the  pulpit  all  the 
year  long  are  so  numerously  resisted  and  not  made  the  most  of,  by 
both  saint  and  sinner ;  but  so  it  is — being  told  a  thing  is  so  curiously 
different  from  personally  encountering  it. 

To  tell  the  truth,  my  young  brethren,  I  myself  struck  a  streak 
of  disappointment  right  at  this  point.  I  did  not  find  what  I  expected. 
I  did  not  know  that  I  expected  it — we  never  know  half  that  is  in  us 
— and  one  of  the  great  uses  of  practical  life  is  to  bring  us  to  a  con- 
sciousness of  our  own  contents,  in  the  way  of  knowledge  and  the 
rest.  I  did  not  give  up,  but  I  could  see  how  a  man  might  at  any 
rate,  how  he  might  slacken  by  and  by,  and  deliver  his  strokes  for 
conscience  sake  mostly ;  or  because  it  is  the  proper  thing  to  do, 
according  to  all  accounts.  I  think  my  teacher  in  theology  helped 
me  to  a  good  deal  of  confidence  in  the  power  of  mere  argument. 
Of  course  he  did  not  fail  to  inform  me,  that  argument  unassisted  by 
God's  direct  unction  must  be  a  failure,  but  he  made  such  an  admir- 
able argument  always  himself,  when  he  tried  and  withal  had  such 
a  fine  soldierliness  in  it,  that  made  as  I  happen  to  be  I  could 
remember  not  much  save  that.  I  believed  his  doctrine  of  unction ; 
but  as  often  comes  to  pass  with  beliefs,  I  folded  it  decently  and 
respectfully  away ;  swore  by  it  when  called  upon  and  proceeded  to 
get  along  without  it  in  a  measure.  Therefore,  my  fervor  in  preach- 
ing was  in  risk  of  ebbing,  when  I  saw  that  all  the  world  was  not 
directly  moved  thereby. 

Again,  some  are  cooled  a  little  by  the  unexpected  parishes  in 
which  they  find  themselves  somehow — soon  or  late — small  parishes 
— parishes  not  on  the  line  of  any  railway  or  turnpike — parishes  of 
limited  salaries,  limited  church  attendance,  limited  increase  of  chil- 
dren, limited  vivacity  and  perhaps  limited  intelligence.  They  never 
supposed  their  merits  ranked  as  low  as  that.  They  were  bright 
enough  in  the  Seminary,  wrote  good  compositions,  attended  to  their 
studies,  were  reasonably  well  spoken  of,  had  a  good  voice,  were  easy 
and  successful  in  their  gestures,  took  their  license  in  their  pocket 
all  their  last  year  and  went  about  preaching  with  what  seemed 
acceptance  at  the  time ;  and  now,  at  the  end  of  twenty  years,  they 
are  lodged  and  seemingly  stuck  where  there  is  neither  railway,  turn- 
pike, nor  increase.  Such  a  discrepancy  between  a  man  and  his  cir- 
cumstances no  one  can  appreciate  who  has  not  been  in  it.  And 
then  the  way  it  confuses  a  man's  mind  !  How  did  I  get  here,  he 
says.     What  secret  faculty,  attribute  or  endowment  in  me,  or  set  of 


354  YALE   LECTURES. 

endowments  was  it,  that  caused  me  to  be  shoved  along  down  and 
down,  by  not  easy  stages,  to  this  place  and  doom. 

Dear  Soul  !  that  has  happened  to  him,  very  possibly,  which 
happens  to  men  in  every  calling.  He  is  a  solidly  meritorious 
person,  just  as  he  thinks  he  is.  His  head  is  excellent  and  his  char- 
acter is  excellent.  But  time  and  sufficient  experiment  have  brought 
to  light  a  constitutional  disqualification  in  him  for  that  particular 
service  on  the  face  of  the  earth,  the  sen-ice  ministerial.  Very  likely 
it  is  a  minute  point ;  but  as  the  smallest  kind  of  a  sufficiently  sharp 
tack  in  the  bottom  of  a  man's  shoe  controls  the  whole  situation  and 
makes  it  necessary  for  him  to  get  another  shoe,  so  that  little  disquali- 
fication is  the  explanation  of  the  mystery  of  that  minister's  career. 
When  I  heard  Cardinal  Manning  and  listened  to  the  victorious  and 
far-reaching  sniff  that  he  gave  whenever  he  made  a  thoroughly  good 
point,  I  thought  that  for  a  settled  preacher  in  a  first-class  position, 
he  would  hardly  answer.  A  sniff  is  nothing.  It  does  not  disprove 
a  person's  character.  It  does  not  show  that  he  is  not  learned,  able 
and  godly  enough  to  be  a  Cardinal ;  but  it  might  prevent  his  being 
a  Cardinal,  if  the  duties  of  that  great  office  required  him  to  stay  on 
one  spot  forever,  among  the  same  set  of  people  and  in  such  close 
quarters  that  they  could  hear  and  could  not  fail  to  hear,  every  sniff 
he  put  forth — thousands  in  a  year,  perhaps. 

It  would  be  ungracious  in  me  to  give  a  list  of  the  many  kinds 
of  sniff  that  hinder  men.  It  is  some  defect  in  the  man's  oratory, 
perhaps ;  it  is  something  or  other  that  you  can  hardly  put  your 
finger  on  in  his  manners  ;  it  is  his  inborn  proneness  to  doubt  a  thing 
which  he  has  struggled  against  but  has  not  yet  extirpated  ;  and  his 
preaching,  in  various  ways,  is  made  unacceptable  by  that  feature  of 
his  mind ;  or  unconsciously  he  is  dogmatic  and  conscientiously 
aggressive  and  can  hardly  sit  five  minutes  in  a  parlor  without  coming 
at  you  with  his  battering  ram  ;  his  well-meant  and  Christian  batter- 
ing ram,  to  be  sure,  and  designed  for  your  salvation ;  nevertheless, 
you  do  not  want  any  salvation  that  is  brought  in  that  way — depraved 
human  nature  being  ridiculously  particular  about  the  way  in  which 
good  is  done  to  it.  Or  this  good  man  is  naturally  very  reserved  and 
the  modern  parish  insists  on  a  good  deal  of  effusiveness ;  or  while 
he  is  congenial  to  old  people,  he  is  not  winning  with  the  young — or 
to  boil  it  all  down  into  one  sentence  and  state  vaguely  what  I  do  not 
relish  analyzing — he  is  not  popular.  It  was  supposed  when  he  was 
young  that  he  was  going  to  be  popular ;  and  he  supposed  he  was ; 


YALE  LECTURES.  355 

but  no  one  then  suspected  the  sharp  tack  that  would  begin  to  stick 
up  in  him,  as  parish  after  parish  tried  him  on  and  wore  him  a  little. 
So  he  is  not  as  enthusiastic  as  he  used  to  be. 

Again,  and  on  the  other  hand,  some  ministers  are  so  popular 
that,  being  much  praised  and  stall-fed  by  their  admiring  parishion- 
ers, they  grow  fat,  contented  and  dull  and  greatly  need  to  be  pricked 
by  the  sharp  pricks  of  adversity.  To  be  sure,  when  they  get  soggy 
enough,  they  are  no  longer  popular ;  but  what  made  them  soggy 
was  too  much  prosperity  and  pampering.  Pampering  tends  to  kill 
a  man's  noble  enthusiasm. 

Again,  his  early  enthusiasm  may  grow  tame  by  reason  of  his 
habitual  contact  as  a  preacher — his  professional  contact — with  the 
truths  of  God  and  the  things  of  God.  All  the  time  he  moves  among 
them ;  all  the  time  it  is  his  business  to  handle  them ;  all  the  time 
this  necessary  familiarity  may  reduce  that  lively  sensibility  in  regard 
to  them  which  he  once  knew. 

And  again,  a  minister  may  unwittingly  numb  himself  and  settle 
into  the  deadness  of  rut-work  and  go  by  routine  rather  than  by  spon- 
taniety,  by  starting  on  his  career  with  a  not  absolutely  supreme 
intention  to  do  good  and  let  all  considerations,  personal  to  himself, 
go.  There  is  an  opportunity  for  great  self-deception  just  there,  my 
brethren.  I  am  not  willing  to  believe  that  any  man  of  you  is  con- 
scious at  present  of  anything  but  a  determination  to  do  God's  work 
and  not  cherish  yourself — not  care  more  for  salary  than  you  do  for 
souls — not  delight  in  a  brilliant  parish  call  more  than  in  a  large 
opportunity  to  bless  mankind.  Theological  students  have  a  good 
deal  of  human  nature  in  them,  but  they  are  all  honest  to  that  extent. 
However,  they  are  not  all  as  sanctified  as  they  may  think  they  are. 
A  quotable  per  centage  of  the  students  here  and  everywhere,  will 
incline  to  use  the  parishes  that  call  them  and  their  opportunities  as 
ministers,  for  their  own  advantage  more  than  they  ought.  They  are 
capable  of  that  kind  of  alloy  in  their  motives.  They  do  not  now  dis- 
tinctly anticipate  such  works,  but  it  will  come.  Well,  they  must 
fight  against  it.  I  presume  all  of  them  will.  And  one  of  the 
reasons  why  they  had  better  is,  that  a  service  of  God  carried  on 
with  that  admixture  of  the  personal  element  works  tremendously 
to  extinguish  the  characteristic  enthusiams  of  the  ministerial  office  ; 
and  I  can  point  you  to  men  now  living  whose  life  is  unhappy,  who 
have  a  great  deal  to  say  against  parishes  and  their  meanness  and 
their  poor  appreciation  of  what  is  done  for  them,  and  who  discharge 


356  YALE    LECTURES. 

their  official  duties  in  a  perfunctory  torpidity  and  with  just  the  joy 
of  a  man  on  a  tread-mill,  because  they  have  slipped  along  into  self- 
serving  ;  although  it  may  be  that  even  yet  they  are  not  quite  aware 
of  the  slipping. 

I  have  now  given  you  some  specimens  of  the  things  that  tame 
down  the  ministerial  man  from  the  beautiful  ardor  and  expectation  of 
his  first  sermon-work  and  pastor-work,  into  the  round-and-round  and 
around  again,  of  a  merely  perfunctory  fidelity.  I  have  omitted, 
though,  one  of  the  frequent  forces  of  dullness,  namely  : — the  neces- 
sarily routine  character  of  some  of  our  work — and  I  have  made  the 
omission,  because  I  want  to  discuss  the  formidable  subject  of  rou- 
tine in  another  lecture. 

I  have  also  omitted  the  depression  which  a  good  and  faithful 
minister  may  feel  when  he  notices  the  numerous  Christian  congre- 
gations that  are  captivated  by  shallow  men  in  the  ministry  and  men 
of  no  taste  and  mock  orators  and  unserious  men  and  men  every 
way  unseasoned,  untempered,  unregulated  and  uncalled  of  the  Holy 
Ghost  too,  one  would  say.  When  a  true  minister  is  sick  of  such 
sights,  he  is  led  to  inquire  within  himself,  why  should  I  offer  my 
services  to  this  unperceiving  generation.  Would  that  God  would 
let  me  out  into  some  pursuit  and  calling  where  a  sterling  man  goes 
for  what  he  is  worth.  So  frequent  has  it  come  to  be  that  people 
are  bewitched  by  inferior  ministerial  gifts,  that  great  popularity  in  a 
preacher  almost  creates  a  presumption  against  him,  in  serious  and 
well-balanced  souls,  who  know  nothing  of  the  man  as  yet,  save  the 
one  thing  that  he  is  very  popular.  Mr.  Ruskin  hits  the  matter  off, 
I  remember,  in  one  of  his  customary  thrusts,  by  saying  : — "a  popular 
preacher  is  admired  by  the  majority  of  his  congregation  for  the 
worst  parts  of  his  sermon."  But  let  it  go.  I  am  glad  to  be  through 
with  this  business  of  telling  what  depresses  ministers  and  deadens 
them.  For  now  I  am  ready  to  spread  myself  out  on  the  things  that 
nourish  enthusiasm  in  a  man  and  keep  him  alive,  merry-hearted  and 
aflame,  notwithstanding  all  possible  disadvantages  and  discour- 
agements. 

And  first,  the  feasibility  of  a  life-long  chirkness  and  upbubbling 
of  the  soul,  is  settled  by  the  many  plain  instances  of  the  same.  We 
look  for  some  bubble  in  boys  and  beginners.  It  is  natural  to  them. 
The  force  of  life  in  them  is  not  yet  abated  by  the  pull  and  the  drain 
of  multiplied  years,  and  they  have  not  come  into  the  full  stress  and 
wear  of  affairs.      But  have  we  not  all  seen  old  boys  in  the  ministry, 


YALE  LECTURES.  357 

gray  and  worn  men  with  a  boy's  heart  under  their  old  jackets,  a 
boy's  zeal,  a  boy's  dauntless  expectation ;  men  that  like  to  preach 
as  well  as  they  ever  did,  like  to  strive  for  souls,  like  to  defend  the 
truth,  like  to  believe  in  the  kingdom  of  God  and  its  ultimate  domin- 
ion ?  Why  yes ;  and  things  like  that  are  not  uncommon  in  other 
professions  and  pursuits.  There  are  aged  lawyers  whose  passion 
for  legal  investigation  and  work  is  a  supreme  delight  to  them  and 
much  more  than  in  the  days  of  their  youth.  And  scientists  and 
musicians  and  teachers  and  business  men,  have  a  similar  experi- 
ence ;  and  even  sheer  money-getting,  that  pitiful  blind  lust  for 
accumulation,  often  grows  to  an  inextinguishable  rage,  as  the  years 
go  on ;  so  that  the  man  goes  out  of  the  world  at  four  or  five  score 
— no  matter  how  old — with  a  money-eagerness  still  on  the  increase. 
If  a  secular  pursuit,  that  in  the  nature  of  things  cannot  engage  and 
inspire  one-half  of  a  man's  soul,  may  make  him  so  indefatigable  and 
so  elate,  so  long  as  he  lives  ;  and  if  a  pursuit  that  is  not  only  secular 
but  directly  cross  and  crash  to  everything  fine,  noble  and  spiritually 
pure  in  our  nature,  can  keep  a  man  alive,  agog,  industrious  and 
devoted,  so  long  as  breath  remains  in  his  body ;  would  it  not  be 
strange  and  infamous  too,  if  ministers  failed  to  reach  a  similar  undy- 
ing zeal ;  stimulated  as  they  are  by  the  highest  conceivable  motives 
and  fascinations. 

The  lawyer,  the  scientist,  the  statesman,  the  philosopher,  is  led 
on,  I  will  suppose,  by  his  love  of  truth  ;  but  consider  the  superiority 
of  the  truths  that  lead  us  on,  as  suited  to  inflame  feeling  and 
endeavor ;  the  truths  of  God  and  the  truths  of  man  as  the  child  of 
God,  foredoomed  to  immortality  and  chosen  in  Jesus  Christ  tc 
eternal  life.  Our  truths  stir  us  up  and  keep  us  going,  by  their  very 
dimensions.  It  is  no  mere  sharpness  that  we  are  called  to  in  our 
studies,  not  microscopy,  pettifogging,  atomizing,  however  important 
they  may  be  ;  but  it  is  to  affairs  of  size,  of  out-stretching  self-expan- 
sions, which  ask  for  the  grandest  we  can  do. 

And  another  thing ;  some  might  think  that  this  very  size  that 
I  speak  of,  in  the  truths  we  pursue,  must  prevent  our  getting  far 
into  them  and  therefore  must  tend  to  daunt  endeavor  and  depress 
the  mind's  natural  ardor ;  but  we,  who  are  in  the  business,  know  it 
is  not  so.  A  great  truth  is  much  more  stimulating  than  little  truths. 
Moreover,  we  do  get  in  to  them  by  our  labors.  We  find  out  one  thing 
after  another  in  the  field  of  religion  and  the  field  of  theology ;  partly 
because  things  actually  new  are  brought  to  light  now  and  then  and 


358  YALE  LECTURES. 

partly  because  the  very  old  truths  which  we  have  always  known  and 
the  Church  has  always  known,  are  freshened  to  our  apprehension  in 
such  wise  as  to  seem  new.  How  common  it  is  for  Bible  readers 
and  students,  to  have  texts  that  they  learned  in  childhood,  have  run 
against  and  considered  a  hundred  times  since  and  have  often 
expounded  to  others,  suddenly  star  forth  before  them  like  meteors, 
and  fill  them  with  divine  delight.  Along  the  horizon  of  every 
inquiring  and  devout  mind,  there  is  always  a  flicker  and  a  glow,  as 
of  truths  yet  hidden  behind  the  hills  ;  and  the  expectancy  thus  kept 
alive  and  the  deep  questioning,  are  among  the  most  sterling  joys  of 
our  life.  How  reprehensible  and  dreadful  is  that  minister  who,  in 
the  midst  of  such  possibilities  and  called  daily  to  handle  and  apply 
the  truth  of  truths,  can  humdrum  and  gradually  die  down  into  just 
a  respectable  automaton  ! 

Passing  now  to  a  point  under  the  head  of  supports  for  a  minis- 
ter's enthusiasm,  I  mention  something  very  fundamental  indeed ; 
something  which  alone  is  more  than  sufficient  for  any  amount  of 
perseverance,  high-heartedness  and  increase  of  joy.  I  refer  to  that 
sense  of  mission  which  we  may  all  have  and  one  as  much  as  another. 
In  so  far  as  your  call  to  the  ministry  and  your  mission  to  men  from 
God,  is  by  you  simply  inferred  from  your  mental  endowments,  your 
proficiency  in  scriptural  and  other  learning,  your  ability  to  address 
assemblies,  your  circumstances  in  life  and  the  verdict  of  an  ecclesi- 
astical council,  assembled  to  pass  upon  your  case  and  send  you  out 
humanly  authenticated,  multitudes  of  men  may  have  a  better  call 
than  you.  Their  gifts,  acquisitions  and  external  furtherances,  may 
be  more  than  yours  ;  and  the  council  that  inspected  them  may  have 
worked  itself  up  to  a  more  rousing  majority  than  your  council  could 
see  its  way  to ;  and  even  if  your  council  was  unanimous  about  you, 
possibly  it  was  one  of  those  luke-warm,  guess-work  and  charitable 
unanimities,  that  are  fair  to  look  upon  outwardly,  but  within  are 
only  so-so. 

But  there  is  one  form  of  call  in  the  which  you  need  not  be 
beaten  by  mortal  man,  be  he  never  so  brilliant  and  the  darling  of  his 
council ;  your  access  to  God  and  God's  access  to  you,  the  mutual 
approach  of  you  and  God,  is  just  as  open,  direct  and  assured  as  can 
be  another's ;  and  that  which  is  the  ultimate  factor  in  all  real  calls 
— the  soul's  message  and  commission  from  God  direct,  private  and 
inaccessible  to  all  inspection  by  bystanders,  doubters,  critics,  well- 
wishers  and  inquiring  councils — that  may  be  yours  perfectly.     Many 


YALE   LECTURES.  359 

a  man  has  it  and  so  may  you.  And  while  I  would  not  advise  a 
young  man  to  refuse  the  ministry  because  this  his  inward  summons 
from  God  had  not  yet  come  to  be  quite  irresistible  \  the  fact  being 
that  many  an  excellent  and  successful  minister  has  gone  to  his  work 
without  that  clear  inward  foreordination  that  he  desired  at  the  time  ; 
yet  I  would  say  to  you,  that  when  a  man  has  reached  the  thick  and 
thunder  of  life's  battle,  or  say,  when  the  great  waters  that  are  fain  to 
drown  him,  strangle  his  zeal,  kill  his  vigor,  put  out  all  his  fires  and 
water-log  him  generally,  are  rolling  in,  there  is  no  dam  against  them 
more  heaven-high  and  solid  that  he  can  raise,  than  his  constant 
remembrance  how  when  he  first  went  out  on  this  business  of  trying 
to  save  souls,  he  did  not  send  himself,  and  was  not  sent  by  man  in 
the  main,  and  was  not  pushed  in  by  a  lot  of  conspiring  circum- 
stances, but  was  sweetly  constrained  by  the  spirit  of  all  grace.  And 
so  constrained  it  would  have  been  the  woe  of  his  life  if  he  had 
not  gone  in ;  so  constrained  too,  that  he  could  have  withstood,  (so 
he  felt  at  the  time) ,  the  lack  of  all  customary  external  furtherances  ; 
and  perhaps  even  the  adverse  finding  of  a  fallible  human  council. 
How  such  a  memory  as  that  lights  up  a  poor,  tried  minister's  soul 
and  keeps  him  warm  and  elate  forever.  There  is  nothing  perfunctory 
about  him  and  cannot  be. 

But  as  I  intimated,  many  (and  perhaps  a  majority,)  are  in  the 
ministerial  office  with  no  such  supreme  off-send  to  fall  back  on 
when  life  grows  heavy,  when  the  parish  is  small  and  away  from  the 
turnpike,  when  they  find  they  are  not  orators  and  when  perhaps 
even  their  personal  godliness  seems  mysteriously  to  have  less  weight 
with  the  populace  that  they  would  have  supposed  it  must.  They 
may  be  truly  called ;  that  is,  they  are  in  the  vocation  where  they 
ought  to  be ;  and  yet  they  did  not  secure,  when  they  started,  quite 
that  call  in  the  soul  to  which  I  have  referred ;  and  now  what  shall 
they  do  ? 

I  should  reason  on  their  case  in  this  way.  It  is  not  wonderful 
that  they  missed  that  special,  luminous,  self-evidencing,  never-to-be- 
forgotten  call,  at  the  beginning  of  their  official  career.  They  were 
young — young  in  every  respect.  They  did  not  realize  the  worth 
of  such  a  call  and  therefore  did  not  seek  for  it  so  earnestly  as  they 
might.  They  had  not  learned  the  secret  of  full  converse  with  God. 
In  their  exuberant  young  energy  they  did  not  conceive  the  miser- 
able uselessness  of  all  human  energies,  however  exuberant,  aside 
from  the  spirit  of  God.      Most  men  have  to  do  their  natural  best 


360  YALE  LECTURES. 

and  be  baffled  a  thousand  times,  before  they  can  learn  that  one 
thing.  It  is  not  wonderful  then,  I  say,  that  these  ministers  have  not 
a  first-class  "call"  to  remember  and  ground  on  and  get  daily 
strength  from. 

But  now  they  have  had  experience.  The  futility  of  man's  forth- 
puttings  to  do  God's  works,  they  have  learned  from  many  a  defeat. 
Contrariwise,  the  triumph  of  the  feeblest  forth-puttings,  if  only  God 
assists,  they  have  also  learned  ;  by  an  occasional  experience  of  their 
own  and  by  a  good  deal  of  watching  of  ungifted  but  consecrated 
brethren,  they  have  learned  the  way  of  prayer.  The  path  between 
them  and  their  God  is  trodden  bare  with  their  footsteps.  So  now 
they  are  in  a  way  to  get  a  call  for  themselves.  They  need  not  strike 
out  for  a  great  general  call  to  cover  their  entire  remaining  life,  such 
a  call  as  a  young  man  before  he  begins  may  naturally  seek.  No,  let 
them  push  for  a  smaller  thing  than  that,  a  thing,  at  any  rate,  more 
detailed  and  close  at  hand.  For  instance  :  let  them  refuse  to  preach 
on  any  given  occasion  till  God  distinctly  gives  them  the  sermon  for 
that  occasion — the  topic — the  text — the  handling  of  the  topic. 
Let  them  insist  on  that  specific  call.  It  is  a  pretty  cheap  minister 
that  never  had  a  sermon  given  him.  And  if  he  can  have  one,  he 
can  have  a  thousand  and  every  one.  The  God  that  gave  the  one 
can  give  the  rest.  The  man  that  got  the  one,  can  get  the  rest.  The 
secret  that  brought  the  one,  will  bring  them  numberless  and  sure  ; 
and  the  secret  that  brought  the  sermon,  will  bring  anything.  For 
instance,  the  minister  can  have  his  public  prayer  given  him,  or  the 
private  word  of  counsel  he  is  going  to  speak,  or  the  settlement  of 
the  numerous  practical  questions  that  come  up  in  the  course  of  his 
ministry,  as  easily  as  he  can  have  his  sermon  given.  And  all  these 
givings  from  God  are  specific  calls  of  God.  Hence,  when  a  man 
moves  out  to  a  particular  thing  on  a  call,  he  moves  strong ;  and  he 
is  happy  and  he  tends  to  believe  in  the  ministerial  office ;  and  he 
thinks  a  parish  off  from  the  turnpike  is  worth  saving  and  might  fitly 
occupy  the  gifts  of  an  archangel.  When  some  deacon  of  his,  with 
a  strong  and  penetrating  mind  and  frank  and  conscientious  habit  of 
speech  and  a  due  sense  of  his  official  importance,  tells  him  that  he 
did  not  enjoy  his  sermon,  did  not  approve  of  it  and  did  not  think 
he  was  impressive  in  its  delivery ;  although  the  minister  is  mortified 
at  first  and  confused  in  his  mind,  nevertheless, -presently  it  comes  to 
him  that  he  got  that  sermon  from  God,  on  his  knees — on  his  knees 
more  than  once — on  his  knees  every  day  while  he  was  writing  it  he 


YALE  LECTURES.  361 

was  speaking  with  God  and  God  was  speaking  with  him ;  and  while 
he  was  sitting  at  his  table  making  his  pen  go,  hunting  for  scriptural 
references,  looking  at  his  commentaries,  doing  his  work,  his  soul 
felt  itself  to  be  feasting — it  was  feasting — God  feasted  him ;  and  in 
that  way  constantly  God  undersigned  his  name  to  that  sermon — and 
a  man  with  all  this  recollection  and  assurance  in  him,  can  stand  ten 
deacons — ten  perspicacious  deacons.  And  the  beauty  of  it  is,  he 
can  stand  them,  not  as  withstanding  them,  not  combatively,  not 
resentfully,  but  receptively,  genially  and  in  that  prudent  spirit  of 
silence,  which  is  so  wholesome  always  in  a  parish.  Why  should  this 
minister  make  contention,  or  feel  hurt,  over  a  matter  on  which  God 
has  definitely  spoken  to  him.  The  minister  may  be  mistaken  about 
God's  part  in  that  sermon — to  mistake  is  human — but  probably  he 
is  not  mistaken.  He  is  no  more  likely  to  be  mistaken  than  he  is  in 
any  other  quite  plain  thing.  However,  all  I  want  to  inculcate  along 
here,  is  the  general  idea  of  the  practicability  and  the  usefulness  of 
calls  as  numerous  as  the  numerous  details  of  a  minister's  daily  life 
and  labors ;  and  emphatically  do  I  wish  to  lift  up  and  magnify  these 
specific  habitual  calls,  as  a  first-rate  antidote  for  the  dejections,  or 
forces  of  dejection,  inherent  in  our  office ;  and  the  much  more 
multiplied  dejections  that  are  not  inherent  in  the  office,  but  are  let 
in  and  lugged  in  by  ministers  themselves ;  and  are  thrust  in  by 
perverse  or  misjudging  men  and  women  on  the  outside. 

It  is  often  that  ministers  find  their  circumstances  rather  deso- 
late— their  deacons  too  perspicacious — their  congregations  too  full 
of  old  roots  of  bitterness ;  their  own  oratory  too  feeble  and  their 
salaries  as  feeble  as  their  oratory.  But  none  of  these  things  move 
them,  or  diminish  their  industry,  fire  and  hope,  provided  all  along 
through  the  stretches  of  desolation,  God  drops  in  His  clear,  sweet 
calls  and  calls,  like  bells  out  of  the  sky,  and  fills  the  souls  of  his 
servants  with  the  great  music  of  them. 

But  now,  thirdly ;  close  along  side  of  what  I  have  been  saying, 
comes  this  thought ;  a  man  in  close  practical  converse  with  God,  in 
the  manner  just  explained,  is  instinctively  hopeful,  warm  and 
undaunted  and  unable  to  be  sunk  in  his  spirit  by  any  criss-cross  of 
circumstances.  It  is  not  a  matter  of  reasoning,  thus — "  This  ser- 
mon of  mine  was  unquestionably  given  to  me  by  my  God,  because 
I  besought  him  ;  therefore  I  stand  to  it,  deacon  or  no  deacon  and 
rejoice  therein  " — no,  the  matter  of  which  I  now  speak  is  much 
less  argumentative  than  that  and  much  more  mystical.  It  is  this  the 
24 


362  YALE  LECTURES. 

man,  by  virtue  of  his  habitual,  close  terms  with  God  in  the  work  of 
getting  his  numberless  calls,  is  unwittingly  lifted  up  into  a  real 
partnership  in  God's  own  repose  and  sanguine  expectation;  and 
so,  when  the  deacon  speaks  to  him,  or  when  the  general  work  of 
God  moves  on  tediously  in  his  parish,  under  his  administration,  or 
the  individual  soul  that  he  has  labored  with  for  weeks  cannot  be 
won  ;  or  his  people  get  tired  of  his  preaching  and  want  him  to  move 
on,  or  what  is  worse  because  vaster,  when  the  cause  of  salvation  is 
stayed,  or  even  retrograde  throughout  a  whole  nation  and  perchance 
throughout  the  world  ;  he  has  no  feeling  that  these  things  are  of  any 
permanent  moment ;  he  knows  all  the  same  that  the  kingdom  of 
God  stands  sure  ;  that  the  lion  of  the  tribe  of  Judah  is  to  conquer ; 
that  his  own  dead  parish  is  not  forsaken  ;  that  yonder  long-sought 
person  in  his  parish  is  not  doomed ;  that  other  days  of  grace  are  to 
come.  And  somehow — he  cannot  explain  how — as  respects  those 
not  few  personal  instances  to  which  salvation  will  certainly  never 
reach,  he  is  not  cast  down  in  just  the  way  he  should  have  supposed 
he  would  be  ;  he  is  sorry  but  he  is  not  desperate  ;  it  is  something 
as  though  the  persons  were  to  be  saved  after  all ;  and  in  like  manner, 
his  own  unexpectedly  small  and  inefficacious  ministry  does  not 
make  him  melancholy,  not  that  exactly ;  for  perhaps  it  will  add  up 
at  the  last  better  than  he  fears  ;  the  reports  are  not  all  in  yet  and 
they  will  not  be  till  the  day  of  judgment ;  in  any  case,  he  simply 
cannot  find  it  in  his  heart  to  take  on  about  it,  as  though  there 
were  no  God  and  no  God's  providence.  He  does  not  reason  it  out, 
I  say  once  more,  but  no  matter,  the  peace  flows  into  him  and  the 
joy  and  the  enthusiasm ;  he  can  find  few  rational  considerations  to 
support  it,  perchance,  at  present,  but  it  does  not  need  such  support ; 
it  comes  of  itself — or  to  fall  back  to  my  original  explanation,  a  man 
in  daily  converse  with  God,  a  man  full  of  God's  calls  and  God's 
personal  dealings,  by  the  nature  of  the  case  doth  participate  in 
God's  own  inscrutable  serenity  as  he  looks  from  his  throne  down 
on  these  same  unnumbered,  wide-spread  deplorables  of  many  kinds. 
Now,  brethren,  I  must  give  you  another  strong  old  recipe  for 
lassitude,  perfunctoriness  and  the  numbness  of  routine  in  clerical 
people.  This  recipe  now  coming,  does  not  operate  on  the  outside 
of  the  difficulty.  It  does  not  comfort  the  numb  minister  by  telling 
him  how  he  can  get  his  salary  raised,  or  how  he  can  make  some 
eligible  parish  call  him  away  from  the  uninteresting  old  spot  where 
he  now  is,  or  anything  of  that  kind  j  but  like  all  good  recipes,  it 


YALE  LECTURES.  363 

moves  straight  in  on  his  joints,  marrow  and  reins  and  totally  revo- 
lutionizes his  inward  parts.  Let  me  open  the  matter  in  this  way. 
St.  Paul  speaks  of  our  fellowship  of  Christ's  sufferings,  and  now  what 
were  those  sufferings.     They  were  these. 

First,  his  self-denial  when  he  left  his  primal  state  and  incor- 
porated himself  in  our  lowly  flesh  and  became  subject  to  earthly 
conditions. 

Next,  he  took  the  burden  of  our  dreadful  case  on  to  his  sympa- 
thetic feeling,  thus  bearing  our  sins  as  no  man  or  angel  could  begin 
to,  because  neither  man  or  angel  is  deep  enough  in  his  sensibilities, 
and  because  he  is  not  comprehensive  enough,  either  intellectually  or 
morally,  to  gather  in  the  details  of  our  lot  and  doom,  in  their  entire 
number  and  their  entire  size. 

Next,  in  that  which  has  come  to  be  known,  preeminently,  as 
the  passion  of  Jesus,  there  was  an  unsearchable  transaction  between 
him  and  his  (and  our)  God,  wherein  he  was  dealt  with  and  consented 
to  be  dealt  with  and  rejoiced  to  be  dealt  with,  in  a  manner  full  of 
agony  for  him,  but  full  of  deliverance  for  us — a  transaction  which  has 
been  always  both  the  fascination  and  the  despair  of  theology  : — a 
transaction  too  around  which  the  innumerable  company  of  non- 
expert thinkers  and  Christians  have  flocked,  as  though  they  all  knew, 
by  their  regenerated  intuitions,  that  in  the  bosom  of  that  mystery 
somewhere,  the  crucial  somewhat  of  their  salvation  was  wrought. 
But  no  matter  about  explanations  and  waiving  everything  save  one 
thing,  I  say,  Jesus  did  suffer  for  us,  substitutionally  and  mediatorially. 

And  now,  as  to  our  fellowship  with  him,  in  the  three  august 
particulars  of  his  suffering,  just  named  ;  his  suffering  by  incarnation, 
his  suffering  by  sympathy  and  his  suffering  in  the  mystery  of  the 
cross.  I  need  not  argue  that  as  regards  incarnation  and  the  suf- 
fering thereof  he  must  stand  forever  alone,  no  mortal  being  able  to 
share  it ;  and  as  regards  his  crucifixion  and  the  substitutional  and 
propitiatory  suffering,  in  that  he  must,  in  the  nature  of  the  case, 
stand  forever  alone  ;  so  that  the  only  remaining  particular  or  point 
at  which  such  as  we  can  follow  him  is  his  sympathetic  deep  concern 
for  men.  And  even  there,  we  can  only  follow  him  afar  off;  but  we 
can  follow  him — yes,  what  he  felt  we  can  feel  in  kind,  and  it  is  one 
of  the  earmarks  of  our  regeneration  if  we  do. 

And  this  concern  for  men,  this  Christ-like  concern,  does  not 
concentrate  wholly  or  mainly  on  man  as  an  embodied  this-world, 
temporal  creature ;  a  being  that  needs  to  be  fed,  clothed,  housed, 


364  YALE   LECTURES. 

educated  and  decorously  buried  ;  that  sort  of  sympathy  is  humanita- 
rianism  and  while  Jesus  was  a  humanitarian,  that  was  not  at  all  the 
unique  feature  in  his  character,  function  and  career.  Jesus  addressed 
himself  to  man  as  a  spiritual  personage  and  spiritually  fallen  ;  and 
whereinsoever  he  was  sympathetically  crushed  by  our  lot,  that  was 
the  great  point  of  the  crush ;  and  it  belongs  to  us  to  enter  his  fel- 
lowship precisely  there ;  and  a  minister  is  no  minister,  but  only  a 
lecturer  and  secularist,  until  he  has  entered  there.  And  it  lies  in 
the  line  of  my  subject  to-day  to  add,  that  the  minister  who  enters 
there  and  there  sympathetically  expatiates,  or  as  some  would  express 
it,  the  minister  who  loves  souls,  aches  for  them,  works  for  them, 
storms  heaven  for  them  and  has  them  for  the  spinal  cord  of  his 
whole  official  activity,  is  habitually  full  of  joy,  push  and  spiritual 
seership,  and  can  no  more  be  dampened  and  made  a  professional 
routinist  and  stick,  than  can  God's  angels. 

The  only  objection  I  have  to  that  traditional  phraseology,  "love 
for  souls,"  as  a  description  of  our  fellowship  with  Christ  in  his  suf- 
fering sympathy  with  men,  is  that  it  is  not  broad  enough.  "  Love 
for  souls"  and  "love  for  men,"  are  by  no  means  equivalent  and 
interchangeable  phrases.  A  man  is  more  than  a  soul.  A  man  is  a 
soul  and  a  body,  with  all  that  implies.  And  Jesus  did  not  come  to 
save  souls  any  more  truly  than  he  came  to  save  bodies,  with  all  their 
belongings,  conditions  and  inferences.  The  gist  of  the  doctrine  of 
the  resurrection  on  one  principal  side  of  it,  is  that  Jesus  assumed  the 
human  body,  in  its  limitation,  disability  and  wreck ;  took  it  down 
into  the  tomb,  where  by  right  it  belonged,  under  the  old  sentence, 
— "The  wages  of  sin  is  death,"  and  rose  with  it,  transubstantiated 
into  a  body,  spiritual,  invulnerable,  incorruptible  and  immortal ;  and 
that  when  he  thus  rose,  or  more  accurately,  when,  after  forty  days 
of  lingering  here,  he  ascended  to  the  right  hand  of  God,  he  shed 
forth  the  Holy  Ghost  as  he  had  promised  he  would,  to  start  the  prac- 
tical recovery  of  our  souls  and  our  bodies  ;  our  souls  right  away  and 
our  bodies  when  the  good  time  comes ;  that  recovery  of  our  bodies 
being  sure  to  be  a  repetition,  limb  for  limb  and  line  for  line,  of  the 
recovery  of  his  own  body,  when  he  emerged  from  the  grave,  tran- 
substantiated, spiritual,  invulnerable,  incorruptible  and  immortal. 
It  is  not  good  theology  then,  to  say  "love  for  souls," — that  is  if  you 
would  be  precise.  It  is  not  always  necessary  to  be  precise ;  but  if 
we  evangelical  men  complain  of  humanitarians  that  they  omit  the 
souls  of  men  from  their  anxieties  and  endeavors,  we,  on  our  part, 


YALE   LECTURES.  365 

must  take  care  not  to  fall  into  a  similar  pit  and  omit  the  bodies  of 
men  from  our  concern,  our  theology  and  our  benevolent  forth-put- 
tings.  There  is  at  present  a  confused  push  of  undiscriminating 
persons  in  the  Christian  Church  against  the  resurrection  of  the  body. 
They  think  it  is  more  spiritual  and  refined  to  ignore  bodies  and  not 
let  the  Christian  salvation  save  them  ;  but  the  "vile  body,"  that  St. 
Paul  tells  about,  is  no  viler  than  the  vile  soul  that  lives  in  it — not  a 
whit — and  if  you  are  to  be  so  over  refined  and  fastidious,  you  must 
ignore  souls  too.  The  fact  is,  the  blessed  Jesus  addressed  himself 
to  souls  and  bodies  both.  He  took  us  in  our  total,  double-phased 
vileness  ;  and  he  raises  us  in  mass,  as  sunken  ships  are  raised.  In 
his  person  to-day,  at  the  right  hand  of  God,  we .  have  a  glorified 
man,  soul  and  body  both,  the  perfect  type  in  that  respect  and  the 
forerunner  of  the  resurrection  hosts  that  will  pour  into  that  same 
holy  presence  at  the  last ;  all  with  their  bodies  on  albeit  in  such  a 
bodily  transmutation,  transfiguration  and  effulgence,  as  will  make  us 
all  turn  in  memory  to  this  description  of  Jesus  on  the  mount  of  his 
transfiguration.  "The  fashion  of  his  countenance  was  altered,  his 
face  did  shine  as  the  sun  and  his  raiment  became  shining,  exceeding 
white  as  snow,  so  as  no  fuller  on  earth  can  white  them."  Is  there 
lack  of  refinement  here  ? 

The  evangelical  love  for  men  then  is  what  we  ministers  need 
in  order  to  life-long,  spontaneous  workfulness  and  high  spirit.  I 
call  it  "  evangelical "  love  in  order  to  indicate  two  things  ;  that  it  is 
another  better  and  bigger  thing  than  were  humanitarian  love  ;  and 
that  it  is  a  God- born  love,  and  is  not  natural.  The  Holy  Ghost  puts 
it  into  our  hearts.  And  the  one  disability  of  some  ministers  is,  that 
such  distinctly  supernatural  love  has  never  been  put  into  them,  and 
is  not  the  spring  whence  their  countless  ministrations  among  men 
flow  forth.  They  are  proper  persons.  They  behave.  They  dress 
rigidly  in  black  suits.  They  call  on  their  parishioners.  They  visit 
the  sick.  They  are  kind  to  the  poor.  They  are  very  decorative  on 
a  ceremonial  occasion.  They  uphold  philanthropies,  reforms,  sound 
politics  and  those  well-ordered  conventionalities  whereon  the  peace 
of  the  world  reposes.  There  is  a  rustle  of  respectability  in  all  their 
garments.  And  they  accomplish  much  good,  too.  If  we  had  never 
heard  of  a  higher  good  than  they  ever  accomplished,  we  should  have 
said,  they  are  doing  well  and  none  can  do  better.  But  there  is 
a  higher  good.  While  you  are  thinking  of  such  a  minister  as  that 
and  his  fine  image  is  before  you,  just  say  over  in  your  mind,  "  the 


366  YALE  LECTURES. 

fellowship  of  Christ's  sufferings — the  fellowship  of  Christ's  suffer- 
ings." Say  it  over  again  and  again  till  you  and  the  other  in 
question  are  enveloped  in  the  atmosphere  of  it  and  he  begins  to 
be  judged  by  its  judgment  and  his  round  of  service  gets  measured 
thereby;  and  see  if  he  does  not  begin  to  shrink  before  you  and 
sound  hollow  comparatively  and  hardly  seem  a  Christian  minister 
after  all. 

I  speak  sharply  because  the  subject  is  a  radical  one.  The  one 
trouble  of  all  disheartened  ministers  is  that  they  have  fallen  out,  or 
were  never  in,  the  fellowship  of  Christ's  sufferings.  It  is  enough  to 
discourage  any  one,  (the  poor  disheartened  man  says),  not  to  have 
more  converts,  more  hearers,  more  salary,  more  books,  more  rail- 
road facilities,  more  proximity  to  the  metropolis,  than  have  I.  Well 
sir,  if  you  had  in  you  the  evangelical  love  for  men  and  the  soul- 
travail  of  the  Lord  Jesus,  you  would  have  all  things,  just  as  St.  Paul 
said  concerning  himself,  "  as  having  nothing,  and  yet  possessing  all 
things." 

But  brethren,  loving  men  in  the  evangelical  way,  as  distin- 
guished from  the  humanitarian,  is  not  the  easiest  thing  in  the  world, 
but  rather,  is  always  a  hard  and  unnatural  thing ;  and  therefore  this 
serious  question  comes  up  :  How  shall  we  ministers  get  the  love  in 
question?  Many  of  us  are  constitutionally  sluggish  in  our  emotions 
and  unaffectionate.  We  may  be  pretty  brainy  and  may  therefore 
have  a  never-dying  interest  in  subjects  and  in  the  unfolding  of  sub- 
jects in  the  pulpit ;  an  interest  that,  taken  in  connection  with  our 
superior  allotment  of  brains,  makes  able  essayists  of  us  and  men  a 
good  deal  admired ;  but  as  regards  love  to  men,  we  are  not  gifted. 
You  may  be  a  humanitarian  by  birth,  thousands  are ;  but  no  one 
was  ever  born  an  evangelical  man-lover.  Moreover,  the  men  them- 
selves that  we  are  to  make  a  business  of  loving  are  extremely 
ineligible  cases,  as  likely  as  not.  Anybody  can  be  a  pretty  fair  lover 
if  he  may  select  his  persons ;  but  the  dreadful  thing  about  this 
whole  matter  of  evangelical  loving  is,  that  the  more  unlovely  the 
man  or  the  woman,  the  more  ardent  and  attached  are  we  required 
to  be.     There  we  are  ;  and  what  are  we  going  to  do  about  it  ? 

In  replying  to  that,  I  go  to  the  very  foundation  of  the  difficulty 
at  the  start — I  have  done  it  already,  in  a  passing  way,  but  I  wish  to 
do  it  formally  and  saliently  now — and  to  say,  that  spiritual  fervor 
towards  men,  which  is  our  most  resplendent  endowment  as  minis- 
ters of  the  Gospel,  has  its  beginning  and  its  eternal  fountain  in  a 


YALE    LECTURES.  367 

personal  experience  of  Christ  for  our  own  selves,  by  the  Holy  Ghost ; 
a  personal  experience  begun,  kept  up  and  daily  renewed  on  and  on. 
If  a  man  cannot  say,  I  am  crucified  with  Christ — I  am  dead  to  sin 
and  the  world,  and  day  by  day  I  die  to  it,  am  dead  and  am  buried, 
something  after  the  strong  manner  of  St.  Paul,  then  he  has  no 
yearning  over  anybody,  no  motion  within  him  to  save  his  fellow  men, 
no  evangelical  love.  He  may  have  natural  love  in  quantities,  any 
quantity ;  enough  to  make  of  him  an  excellent  humanitarian  ;  but 
this  other  great  kind  of  love,  this  greatest  of  all  kinds,  he  knows 
nothing  about. 

But  I  will  suppose  the  minister  has  had  his  personal  experience 
of  Christ — his  regeneration,  in  fact,  by  the  Holy  Ghost — that  to 
begin  with ;  and  that  his  experience  of  salvation  is  daily  renewed 
within  him,  so  that  therefore,  love  to  men  is  at  last  natural  to  him. 
Then  next  all  along  by  study  and  meditation  on  the  subject,  he  may 
enlarge  his  conception  of  man,  of  his  rank  among  created  things,  of 
his  very  great  dimensions,  of  his  indefinite  capacity  for  personal 
expansion,  his  ability  to  suffer  and  to  enjoy,  his  eternal  inability  to 
go  out  of  existence,  the  enormous  ransom  that  has  been  paid  down 
for  him,  his  salvability  to  the  uttermost,  under  the  terms  of  that 
ransom,  his  present  uncleanness  and  his  possible  holiness ;  his 
present  spiritual  debility  and  inaptitude  and  his  possible  vigor ;  his 
present  weariness  and  disrelish  and  frequent  despair  in  all  moral 
action  and  his  possible  spontaneity  therein ;  his  present  dreadful 
selfishness  towards  his  fellows  and  his  possible  concord  and  affection 
towards  them ;  his  present  profound  affiliation  with  the  kingdom  of 
evil  and  his  possible  affiliation  with  the  kingdom  of  God — and  when 
the  minister  in  these  ways  of  meditation  has  reached  an  ample  idea 
of  man,  an  irresistible  loving  concern  for  him  springs  up  in  his  soul ; 
and  in  all  he  does  as  preacher  or  pastor,  he  is  made  ardent,  ener- 
getic and  positively  supernatural — while  in  this  exalted  passion,  it  is 
all  but  impossible  for  him  to  think  of  such  a  matter  as  his  own  salary 
and  the  size  of  his  congregation,  and  the  location  of  his  parish,  and 
the  small  power  of  his  own  oratory  and  the  swarm  of  little  dejections 
that  fill  the  air  like  summer  gnats  and  try  to  make  an  unhappy, 
complaining,  tormented  creature  of  him.     They  simply  cannot  do  it. 

It  is  related  of  many  Christian  martyrs,  how  they  literally  did 
not  feel  the  fires  that  burned  them  up.  I  suppose  there  is  good 
physiology  for  that  and  good  psychology.  And  our  martyrdoms  in 
third-rate  parishes,  our  personal  exposure  to  able-bodied  deacons 


368  YALE  LECTURES. 

and  others,  our  conscious  lack  of  natural  gifts,  our  lack,  perhaps,  of 
educational  gifts,  our  unoratorical  way  of  speaking,  (the  best  we  can 
do,  but  nothing  to  boast  of) ,  our  curious  capacity,  it  may  be,  to 
throw  a  coldness  over  the  meeting  when  we  go  about  in  society, 
(one  would  need  to  write  a  volume  to  rehearse  all  the  inadequa- 
cies of  our  tribe  ;  their  real  inadequacies,  their  imputed  and  alleged 
inadequacies  and  that  still  larger  class  of  inadequacies  which  are 
neither  real  nor  imputed,  but  are  imagined  by  ourselves  on  the  Mon- 
days of  each  week ;)  concerning  the  whole  multitude  of  these,  as 
the  martyrs  mentioned  were  sublimed  by  the  cause  they  died  for,  in 
such  wise  that  they  did  not  know  their  hurts  ;  so  our  devotion  to  the 
ends  of  the  ministry,  our  love  for  those  for  whom  Jesus  died,  will 
at  least  minimize  the  disadvantages  whereunto  we  maybe  appointed, 
and  lead  us  to  thank  God  every  day  that  he  was  willing  to  put  us 
into  the  service  of  his  Son. 

Now,  my  dear  young  men,  I  want  to  stop  here,  on  this  whole- 
some high  upland  which  we  have  reached  after  some  climbing ; 
but  for  the  sake  of  a  complete  statement,  I  will  take  you  down  to  a 
low  place  and  say  unto  you,  that  a  minister  truly  devoted  to  the 
high  ends  of  his  calling,  as  just  now  explained,  will  be  likely  to  have 
all  the  temporal  furtherances  he  really  needs,  all  the  admiration  he 
can  stand,  and  calls  from  parishes  loud  enough,  as  likely  as  not,  to 
imperil  his  soul.     Amen. 


LEGITIMATE  ELEMENTS  OF 
VARIETY  IN  CHURCH   SERVICE. 


I  pass  to-day  to  a  consideration  of  the  legitimate  elements  of 
variety  in  the  public  services  of  the  Church. 

And  when  I  say,  legitimate  elements,  I  intend  in  some  wise  a 
slant  at  the  elements  illegitimate  that  have  been  known  to  slip  in, 
on  a  call  from  itching  ears  and  itching  eyes  and  that  general  itch  of 
the  mind,  which  a  certain  very  reputable  writer  hit  off  and  made 
immortal,  when  he  said,  "All  the  Athenians  and  strangers  which 
were  there,  spent  their  time  in  nothing  else  but  either  to  tell  or 
to  hear  some  new  thing."  Modern  life  is  much  more  diversi- 
fied and  complex  than  life  in  the  old  time  was.  There  are  more 
books  to  read,  more  theatres,  operas,  concerts,  circuses,  menag- 
eries and  side-shows  to  attend  ;  more  expansiveness,  multiformity, 
glitter,  gorgeousness  and  dizziness  of  social  life ;  swarms  of  re- 
formatory movements,  from  the  salvation  of  drunkards  and  street 
Arabs,  to  the  betterment  of  the  dress  of  women  ;  more  clubs,  guilds, 
and  conspiracies  ;  more  new-born  ologies  to  investigate  and  be  able 
to  pass  an  examination  upon — all  these  spicy  inventions  have  to  be 
supported  and  continually  replenished  with  fresh  victims.  And  at 
the  top  of  everything,  stands  that  admirable  modern  monster,  the 
daily  newspaper,  to  see  that  nobody  goes  to  sleep  in  this  miscella- 
neous business  of  living  and  taking  in  all  these  varieties  and  inter- 
esting phenomena,  which  are  massed  in  the  ample  spaces  of  the  first- 
class  journal ;  massed,  described,  spun  out,  ornamented  and  some- 
times illustrated  with  wood-cuts,  so  that  even  children  cry  for  them  ; 
and  by  the  time  Sunday  comes  and  these  rather  jaded  and  sometimes 
blase  multitudes  of  people  who  have  been  thus  profusely  entertained 
during  the  week,  are  assembled  in  the  Sanctuary  to  have  their  souls 


370  YALE  LECTURES. 

saved  ;  I  tell  you,  they  know  a  dull  service  from  one  stirring ;  they 
want  you  to  put  on  all  your  steam  and  blow  your  whistle  in  every 
conceivable  pitch.  What  they  most  delight  in,  is  to  have  you  tell 
them  in  their  Saturday's  newspaper  exactly  what  your  entertainment 
is  to  be  ;  the  subject  of  the  sermon,  the  musical  programme,  the 
particular  singers  on  duty  for  that  day,  who  the  preacher  is  and  all 
about  it.  A  manful  resistance  to  this  pressure  is  kept  up  by 
numerous  old  fogies — a  considerably  despised  and  useful  class  ;  and 
by  force  of  them,  aided  to  some  extent  by  the  better  parts  of  the 
Athenians  themselves,  who  like  a  wide-awake  life  for  six  days,  but 
do  not  object  to  a  comparatively  peaceful  harbor  on  the  seventh ; 
by  the  combination  of  all  possible  forces  1  say,  the  house  of  God  is 
preserved  in  a  good  degree  of  sanctity  in  many  places  ;  the  ancient 
approved  services  go  on  for  substance ;  and  only  such  departures 
from  old-fashioned  ways  are  permitted,  as  God  will  wink  at,  pre- 
sumably, in  view  of  the  hardness  of  our  hearts  and  the  weakness  of 
our  frame  and  the  beggarly  elements  whereof  we  are  composed  in 
both  soul  and  body.  But  it  is  not  as  it  was,  when  the  New  England 
ministers  could  preach  an  hour  and  then  preach  another  hour; 
and  could  even  pray  an  hour  and  on  particular  occasions  make  a 
service  six  hours  long,  with  never  a  particle  of  sensational  material 
in  it  all,  nor  one  word  put  in  for  mere  entertainment's  sake,  from 
beginning  to  end,  nor  a  single  thing  done  to  ease  the  strain  of  strict 
attention,  or  to  comfort  the  stationary  and  fixed  mortal  bodies  of 
those  fine  old  Puritans.  Those  days  are  gone.  Somehow  they  have 
left  us.  And  now  men  lecture  on  the  legitimate  elements  of  variety 
in  the  public  services  of  the  Church,  as  though  the  Athenian  great- 
grandsons  of  those  same  iron-built  fathers  must  be  humored  in  their 
desire  for  varied — not  to  say  variegated — exercises  in  the  Sanctuary. 
My  brethren,  I  am  not  going  to  surrender  anything  important 
to  this  outcry  for  ease  and  entertainment  in  the  house  and  worship 
of  God,  but  I  will  indicate  certain  points  where  it  is  not  impossible 
to  introduce  that  diversity  which  even  the  most  sanctified  souls  do 
really  enjoy ;  and  more  than  that,  turn  it  to  good  spiritual  account. 
Let  it  be  granted  that  in  certain  great  staples,  public  worship  is  to  be 
the  same,  unchangeable  forever ;  as,  that  it  is  to  be  made  up  of  prayer, 
praise  musically  expressed,  Scriptural  readings,  preaching  and  the 
several  ordinances  which  the  Scriptures  make  binding  on  us  ;  and 
that  these  solid  terms  and  details  of  any  and  every  service  are  to  be 
strung  along  in  an  outline  order,  which  must  be  approximately  the 


YALE  LECTURES.  371 

same  for  all  time ;  let  so  much  as  that  be  conceded  (as  it  will  be  by 
people  who  think  the  subject  out)  ;  and  then  the  several  easements 
that  may  be  let  in  for  soul  and  body,  are  something  like  the  fol- 
lowing. 

First,  as  our  bodies  naturally  abhor  a  fixed  posture  if  it  is  too 
long  continued,  and  as  a  body  full  of  abhorrence  can  greatly  discom- 
pose the  man  in  it  and  spoil  his  worship,  it  is  best  that  our  services 
should  call  for  quite  a  little  change  of  posture  as  they  move  on.  If 
a  service  is  properly  organized,  it  will  require  diversified  bodily 
movements.  There  is  a  congregation  of  sensible  people,  for  whom 
I  have  sometimes  officiated,  that  unanimously  keep  to  their  seats 
and  rise  not  at  all,  until  the  singing  of  the  last  hymn ;  and  they  do 
not  rise  then  on  any  feeling  that  God's  praise  should  not  be  sung 
down-sitting,  rather  than  in  a  posture  of  special  reverence ;  for  if 
any  such  feeling  was  in  them  they  would  rise  at  the  several  times 
when  his  praise  is  sung  in  the  earlier  parts  of  the  hour — no,  they 
rise,  partly  because  it  seems  about  time  so  to  do,  and  partly  because 
once  up,  they  are  already  to  march  out  and  lose  no  time,  so  soon 
as  the  benediction,  which  immediately  follows  the  hymn,  is  spoken. 
Now  that  people  are  continually  violating  one  of  the  solemn  proprie- 
ties of  God's  house — inconsiderately  of  course,  for  they  are  a  rever- 
ent people.  They  bow  their  heads  in  prayer.  That  address  to  God 
they  take  some  sense  of. ,  Why  then,  do  they  not  sense  it  when  they 
move  out  towards  God  in  song  and  make  some  bodily  testimony 
corresponding,  and  thereby  take  some  of  the  physical  tediousness 
out  of  their  service  ? 

I  have  been  in  assemblies,  a  very  few,  where,  when  I  said, 
"Let  us  pray,"  scarcely  any  one  went  down  at  all.  There  they  sat, 
as  stiff-set  as  though  head-bowing  might  lead  on  to  some  formalism. 
They  were  good  enough  people,  most  of  them,  but  they  had  not 
given  attention  to  the  very  axioms  of  right  action  before  God. 
Posture  is  nothing  and  piety  is  everything,  I  presume  they  would 
say,  if  being  challenged  on  the  subject,  they  had  the  pluck  to  say 
anything. 

When  the  officiating  clergyman  in  the  Protestant  Episcopal 
Service,  begins,  "Dearly  beloved  brethren,  the  Scripture  movethus," 
and  so  forth,  the  dearly  beloved  brethren  in  question  get  upon  their 
feet  to  hear  what  he  may  have  to  say ;  and  they  do  it  because  it  is 
more  decent  to  stand  when  you  are  addressed  by  a  person  in  a 
formal  way ;  and  they  ought  therefore  to  stand  through  the  sermon, 


372  YALE  LECTURES. 

if  it  were  practicable.  I  have  never  carefully  examined  the  printed 
services  of  the  great  liturgical  bodies,  to  see  whether  every  bodily 
change  therein  required  is  founded  on  the  nature  of  the  particular 
act  performed  at  each  change,  but  I  presume  it  is.  Those  liturgical 
Christians,  taken  all  together,  have  made  some  study  of  such  things 
and  their  worshipful  practices  are  apt,  to  that  extent,  to  be  rationally 
grounded.  The  minister  kneels  in  the  prayers  for  the  same  reason 
that  the  congregation  do  ;  because  he  then  comes  into  the  presence 
of  God  and  speaks  to  him ;  but  in  the  Absolution  he  stands  and 
they  remain  kneeling,  because  he  is  then  God's  spokesman  to  them 
and  God's  gift-bringer,  while  they  are  recipients  from  God,  through 
him. 

This  matter  is  full  of  detail,  but  the  main  thing  I  am  after  in 
referring  to  it  at  all,  is  to  bring  out  before  you  one  particular  where- 
in the  public  service  may  have  some  elasticity  and  not  amount  to  a 
bodily  imprisonment,  especially  to  young  children.  When  you  sing, 
stand  up,  or  do  something  to  show  that  you  know  you  have  come 
to  another  turn  in  the  ongo  of  the  worship.  When  the  prayer  has 
been  reached,  bow  down,  or  else  stand  up,  as  our  fathers  did — either 
way  is  Scriptural,  at  least  do  something.  When  you  receive  the 
benediction,  bow  your  head,  unless  you  are  so  stiff  a  congregationalist 
and  so  afraid  of  admitting  the  priesthood  of  the  ministry,  that  you 
cannot  conscientiously  take  an  attitude  which  says  that  something 
did  really  come  from  God  to  you  through  that  speaking  man's — 
"The  Lord  bless  you" — floating  down  from  the  pulpit.  When  the 
choir  are  singing  their  piece,  you  must  settle  for  yourself  what  you 
had  better  do  then.  Theoretically  they  are  praising  God,  very 
likely  speaking  for  you  in  the  matter,  because  you  have  never 
learned  the  fine,  etherial  language  they  are  using,  in  order  to  speak 
for  yourself;  and  therefore,  it  would  seem  you  ought  to  stand  up, 
just  as  you  bow  in  prayer  with  the  minister  when  he  theoretically 
voices  your  prayer  for  you.  And  by  these  several  corporeal  flexi- 
bilities, you  shall  not  merely  adjust  yourself  to  the  varying  realities 
and  the  obvious  decorums  of  the  occasion,  but  do  something  to 
save  yourself  from  a  feeling  of  monotonousness  in  the  church 
worship. 

Again,  the  minister  can  introduce  certain  reliefs,  by  cultivating 
a  reasonable  variety  in  the  tones  of  his  voice  and  a  reasonable  ver- 
satility in  his  gestures,  too,  I  may  add.  Perhaps  you  will  feel  that  I 
am  detaining  you  on  minimum  particulars  now,  and  I  do  not  myself 


YALE  LECTURES.  373 

suppose  that  tones  and  gestures  in  a  preacher  are  so  momentous 
as  piety.  A  man  cannot  get  into  heaven  by  the  lift  of  his  own  ora- 
tory, so  fast  as  he  can  by  the  lift  of  his  own  piety.  Still  when  he 
comes  to  the  tug  of  lifting  others  into  that  bright  haven,  the  awful 
fact  is,  that  voice  and  a  few  apparently  small  things  of  that  sort,  are 
among  the  maxima  of  personal  influence.  It  is  one  of  the  unescap- 
able  disadvantages  of  preachers  as  compared  with  all  other  orators, 
that  their  subjects  of  discourse,  being  uniformly  grave  ones,  and  not 
unfrequently  even  terrible  subjects,  tend  towards  and  almost  compel 
solemn  vocal  tones,  and  also  easily  carry  a  man  into  cadenced  tones, 
otherwise  called  "sing-song."  That  mellifluous  embroidering  of 
grave  tones  which  our  church  organists  practice,  we  preachers  can- 
not emulate,  for  we  use  an  organ  of  only  one  pipe — though  a  pipe 
of  much  range — and  then,  if  the  truth  must  be  told,  ministers  are 
more  serious  men  than  organists,  on  the  average,  and  before  God  do 
not  dare  put  even  their  one  pipe  through  all  its  possible  variations, 
when  they  preach.  However,  we  must  shun  monotony.  Other 
things  being  equal,  that  will  at  least  double  the  length  of  our  pas- 
torate. I  have  been  in  this  evil  world  longer  than  you  have,  young 
men,  and  that  is  one  of  the  things  I  have  discovered. 

As  to  monotonous  gestures,  those  appear  only  on  those  men 
who  have  given  careful  attention  and  a  good  deal  of  practice  to 
delivery.  Probably  they  have  been  in  the  hands  of  some  teacher  of 
oratory,  have  learned  rules  of  gesture  and  have  studiously  made 
gestures  in  private.  I  heard  a  minister  of  some  name  and  some  pith, 
repeat,  memoriter,  a  thoroughly  elaborated,  doctrinal  sermon,  an 
hour  long ;  and  knowing  his  memoriter  habit,  I  expected  to  notice 
that  he  said  the  same  words  that  he  did  before  •  but  I  declare  unto 
you,  he  made  the  same  gestures  all  through — for,  all  the  principal 
gestures,  the  absolutely  killing  ones,  I  could  definitely  recollect. 
They  were  good  and  they  came  in  all  along  at  exactly  the  same 
points  as  on  the  first  occasion.  You  might  say,  if  they  were  at  the 
right  points  on  the  first  occasion,  why  should  they  be  changed  to  the 
wrong  points  on  the  second  for  the  sake  of  variety ;  and  perhaps  I 
could  not  answer  you,  but  T  could  suggest  and  I  would  suggest,  that 
a  certain  effect  of  monotony  cannot  be  escaped  if  preachers  are 
going  to  cut-and-dry  things  in  that  manner.  Cutting-and-drying, 
when  carried  beyond  a  certain  line,  becomes  what  is  known  as 
mannerism  ;  and  did  you  ever  know  anybody  who  liked  mannerism, 
when  he  really  took  a  full  sense  of  the  thing?      Vary  your  voices 


374  YALE  LECTURES. 

then,  gentlemen,  so  much  as  circumstances  will  permit,  and  when 
you  come  to  giving  us  gestures,  let  us  have  a  diversiform  assort- 
ment. Let  up  on  your  solemnity  a  bit,  for  the  time  being,  if  you 
cannot  make  your  voice  flexile  otherwise ;  and  give  us  a  change 
from  gestures,  even  in  the  form  of  non-gesturing  for  a  space,  so 
that  we  may  the  more  relish  your  prepared,  proper  and  infallible 
gestures,  when  you  get  back  to  them. 

Thirdly,  do  not  make  your  services  monotonous  in  and  by 
your  strong  push  for  unity  in  the  service.  I  spoke  to  some  of  you 
here  two  years  ago,  of  a  Communion  service  I  had  attended  just 
before,  wherein  the  able  and  well-known  man  who  conducted  it, 
came  near  being  the  death  of  us,  because  in  his  Invocation  at  the 
start,  he  took  us  straight  to  the  Holy  table  and  to  the  centermost 
and  most  heart-moving  realities  of  it ;  and  then  in  his  choice  of  the 
hymn  immediately  following,  did  the  same  thing ;  and  then  read  an 
intense  Scripture  in  the  same  line  and  then  prayed  at  length,  on  the 
same  subject,  mostly  ;  and  preached  on  it  three  quarters  of  an  hour 
and  then  called  us  to  sing  one  of  the  fervid,  good  hymns  on  the 
Passion  of  the  Lord  ;  and  finally  invited  the  meagre  remainders  of 
our  feeling  to  warm  up  to  what  was  really  the  focus  of  the  occasion  ; 
though  as  you  see,  that  focus  had  been  by  him  carried  back  out  of 
its  place  to  the  opening  act  of  the  service — the  Invocation — and 
from  that  had  been  kept  moving  along  down  through  all  the  details 
of  the  worship,  a  perpetually  present  and  traveling  thing.  The  man 
or  woman  in  the  pew,  who  had  moved  through  the  foregoing  parts 
of  the  exercises  that  day  with  only  a  languid  enlistment  of  his  or  her 
feeling — or  possibly  with  no  enlistment  at  all — could  accept  that 
invitation  to  warm  up  when  the  table  was  at  last  reached  ;  but  I, 
who  had  been  fool  enough  to  start  off  with  the  minister  in  his  Invo- 
cation and  warm  up  there  and  be  as  over-quick  as  he  was ;  and 
thereafter  had  kept  warmed  up  every  time  he  asked  me  to ;  I,  be  it 
said  had  come  to  the  end  of  my  responsiveness ;  and  what  he  did 
at  the  blessed  table  was  of  comparatively  no  account  to  me.  I 
was  as  empty  as  a  last  year's  nest.  I  had  been  privileged  to  be 
present  and  assist  at  a  magnificent  instance  of  unity,  but  it  was 
one  of  those  cases  referred  to  by  the  late  Duke  of  Wellington, 
where  a  victory  is  worse  than  a  defeat. 

Brethren,  unity  is  not  incompatible  with  variety.  I  have  care- 
fully counted  the  separate  and  different  particulars  of  that  Sunday 
morning's  transaction ;  and  I  find  there  were  eleven  of  them,  if  not 


YALE  LECTURES.  375 

twelve — enough,  in  conscience,  to  have  secured  the  most  ample 
diversity.  And  the  way  to  secure  it,  was  to  make  the  seven  partic- 
ulars that  antedated  the  administration  of  the  Supper,  just  range  the 
utmost  permissible  limits  of  the  inner  circles  of  the  Christian  religion. 
There  was  no  need  to  go  out  of  sight  of  Calvary  and  the  Cross. 
No  ;  it  was  necessary  on  that  occasion  to  keep  near  to  it  in  hymn, 
prayer,  Bible  lesson  and  sermon  ;  but  if  the  minister  had  made  his 
Invocation  (that  which  Invocations  always  should  be),  an  asking  of 
God's  blessing  on  that  Service  then  begun,  (that  and  nothing  more) 
and  the  hymn  following,  a  magnification  of  the  Lord's  day ;  and  the 
Scriptural  lesson  a  history  of  the  origin  of  the  Jewish  passover  (that 
for  example) ,  and  the  succeeding  long  prayer,  as  rangey  a  thing  as 
prayer  ever  has  the  conscience  to  be  ;  and  the  sermon  a  root  dis- 
cussion of  self-sacrifice,  from  the  text — "Verily,  verily,  I  say  unto 
you,  except  a  corn  of  wheat  fall  into  the  ground  and  die,  it  abideth 
alone,  but  if  it  die  it  bringeth  forth  much  fruit," — if  these  had  been 
the  preliminaries,  would  they  not  have  been  in  perfect  unity  with 
the  ceremony  to  follow ;  and  yet  would  any  decent  man  have  had 
the  least  sense  of  being  tired  on  account  of  monotony  ? 

So  at  a  funeral,  if  that  happens  which  I  have  sometimes  known 
to  happen,  that  three  prayers  are  offered  by  two  or  three  ministers, 
at  the  house  and  at  the  grave-side,  and  that  in  those  successive 
prayers,  all  those  especially  bereaved  are  photographed  in  outline 
and  commended  to  God  three  times  over ;  to  be  sure  unity  is 
secured,  but  it  is  the  wearisome  unity  of  a  monotone,  whereas,  in 
all  Christian  services,  the  only  right  unity  is  that  which  you  see  in  a 
good  picture,  where  there  are  never-so-many  elements,  or  forms  of 
material  present ;  human  figures,  hills  and  valleys,  trees,  breadths  of 
haze,  lights,  sky-lines  and  what  not ;  but  all  are  victoriously  reduced 
to  the  oneness  of  an  absolute  composition,  by  that  unifying  genius 
which  no  man  can  analyze  and  tell  how  it  does  what  it  does,  but  in 
which  man  is  the  image  of  the  God  who  made  him,  as  wonderfully 
as  at  any  other  point  of  his  mental  organism,  save  only  his  moral 
attributes  and  the  workings  thereof.  The  organization  of  a  service, 
then,  so  that  while  it  may  be  very  plural  in  its  details  and  full  of 
variety,  it  shall  be  a  solid  unity,  is  a  work  of  art,  a  real  composition, 
and  it  needs  some  thought  and  care.  Still  further,  the  result  to  be 
secured  is  such  a  choice  one  and  in  such  a  choice  field,  that  it  is 
worth  some  attention.  It  requires  some  attention,  and  some  atten- 
tion not  only  to  compose  and  unify  the  legitimate  elements  of  variety 


376  YALE  LECTURES. 

in  God's  worship,  but  to  eliminate  all  spurious  elements,  sensation- 
alism, vain-glorious  music,  eloquent  prayers,  rituals  that  are  the 
product  of  one  local  minister's  brain,  unsaturated  by  the  liturgical 
wisdom  of  the  ages ;  in  short,  all  the  spawn  of  the  spurious. 

Fourthly,  a  word  as  to  variety  in  sermons.  How  shall  sermon- 
izers  be  various  and  so  not  tire  their  audiences?  Shall  they  go 
outside  of  Christianity  and  outside  of  the  Bible  for  fresh  and  taking 
topics ;  topics  that  men  are  immersed  in  at  the  moment  and  are 
therefore  likely  to  give  their  attention  to  if  their  minister  takes  them 
up — such  as  the  election,  the  murder,  the  strike  of  laborers,  the  great 
defalcation,  the  last  scientific  or  other  book?  No — Christianity  is 
fertile  enough  in  topics,  if  you  only  find  them.  If  you  want  to 
allude  to  the  murder  and  the  defalcation  and  the  book,  as  illustrating 
or  as  clinching  some  Christian  thing  about  which  you  are  talking, 
very,  well ;  but  do  not  make  the  body  of  your  discourse  of  secular 
material  and  stuff. 

But  just  as  energetically  as  I  say,  do  not  go  outside  of  Chris- 
tianity— in  a  large  interpretation  of  that  word  Christianity — do  I 
add  :  be  careful,  while  you  are  observing  those  true  and  obvious 
limits,  be  careful  not  to  make  your  Christian  sermon  itself  dull,  by 
too  exclusive  preaching  on  a  small  assortment  of  truths.  You  have 
heard  it  said  of  some  men,  that  they  have  only  about  one  sermon. 
They  preach  from  a  good  many  texts  and  on  a  good  many  subjects, 
but  they  always  preach  the  same  sermon.  All  roads  lead  to  Rome  ; 
and  these  preachers  in  all  their  themes  bring  up  at  their  dear  Rome 
presently.  At  a  certain  Yale  commencement,  as  much  as  thirty 
years  ago,  the  annual  concio  ad  clerum  was  preached  by  the  Rev. 
George  Perkins,  and  his  subject  had  been  given  him  a  year  before- 
hand by  the  General  Association  of  Connecticut,  and  it  was  Chris- 
tian Sanctification.  Perkins  was  a  strong  man  and  an  excellent  and 
successful  parish  minister,  and  a  redoubtable,  much-speaking  anti- 
slavery  man.  We  all  knew  what  he  would  most  want  to  discuss  in 
that  concio  of  his,  but,  said  we,  "  he  is  tied  up  for  once  ;  Christian 
Sanctification  is  his  subject,  unanimously  voted  to  him  and  there  he 
is."  Perkins  was  as  able  to  discuss  Sanctification  as  the  next  man, 
he  was  considerably  sanctified  himself;  but  when  we  flocked  into 
yonder  Church  on  The  Green,  to  hear  him,  he  gave  us  for  his  first 
sentence,  these  words  : — "  The  greatest  hindrance  to  sanctification 
in  this  country,  is  Slavery ;"  and  from  that  he  went  on  to  give  us 
one  of  his  plain-spoken,  rousing  and  good  anti-slavery  speeches.     I 


YALE  LECTURES.  377 

am  not  here  to  say  whether  he  did  right  or  wrong,  but  I  want  to 
caution  you  against  habitually  having  one  discourse,  whatever  your 
subject  may  be,  or  at  most  but  half  a  dozen  discourses  ;  better  have 
more.  We  all  know  that  Christianity  has  her  major  truths  and  her 
minor  truths ;  and  that  majors  may  go  into  sermons  oftener  than 
minors ;  and  that  some  majors  are  so  immensely  major  (the  majors 
of  the  majors),  that  tones  from  them — tones  direct  or  tones  far-away 
and  faint — may  reasonably  be  heard  in  a  good  part  of  our  public 
utterances ;  but  to  say,  as  some  men  have  been  known  to,  that  we 
will  never  preach  a  sermon  from  which  a  man  listening  might  not 
learn  the  way  of  salvation  and  be  saved  then  and  there,  if  he  never 
heard  a  sermon  before,  is  to  limit  one's  self  and  cut  off  one's  variety 
and  provide  for  our  being  tiresome  over  much. 

Also,  why  should  every  sermon  that  we  preach  be  constructed 
in  one  and  the  same  way,  as  so  many  heads  and  two  applications, 
one  to  saints  and  one  to  sinners  ;  why  not  make  lots  of  sermons  with 
no  heads  and  no  applications,  like  a  poem  ?  The  highest  kind  of 
poem  never  has  heads,  much  less  thrusts  them  forth  and  calls  the 
world  to  make  a  note  of  them.  It  has  a  skeleton  and  points  of 
juncture  and  articulation  in  the  skeleton,  but  all  that  is  concealed,  not 
in  any  guile,  or  even  with  intention,  any  more  than  a  born  infant  is 
deliberately  planned  and  plotted  to  conceal  that  frame  work  which  he 
undoubtedly  has.  A  born  sermon  never  advertises  its  joints,  first, 
second,  third  and  fourth  and  so  on ;  though  a  very  important  class 
of  sermons  reasonably  may  and  often  do  and  even  perhaps  must  \ 
I  refer  to  such  as  are  formulated  by  the  formulative  intellect,  being 
manufactured  rather  than  born  and  designed  to  instruct  rather 
than  magnetize. 

Again,  why  should  a  preacher  be  habitually  didactic,  or  habit- 
ually expository,  or  habitually  hortatory,  or  habitually  argumentative, 
or  habitually  pathetic  and  think  he  has  failed  if  somewhere  in  his 
discourse  he  has  not  visibly  wept,  or  let  a  tremulo  into  his  voice. 
There  is  enough  to  weep  about,  more  than  enough,  and  a  preacher 
had  better  let  himself  do  it  sometime  before  he  dies,  and  perhaps 
several  times,  but  why  found  his  reputation  on  that  and  be  monoto- 
nous about  it.  There  is  nothing  more  tedious  than  tears,  if  they 
are  let  on  too  frequently.  "This  is  a  poor  community  to  cry  in," 
said  one  of  my  deacons  one  day,  when  we  were  querying  whether 
to  call  in  a  certain  emotional  evangelist.  "This  is  a  very  poor 
community  to  cry  in." 
25 


378  YALE   LECTURES. 

And  it  is  a  poor  community  to  do  any  one  thing  in  monoto- 
nously. All  sorts  of  sermons  are  open  to  us  to  preach.  And  let  us 
preach  them.  Sometimes  we  may  take  the  modern  newspaper 
article  for  our  model  and  be  short,  direct  and  business-like,  letting 
exordiums  and  perorations,  heads  and  applications,  appeal  and 
hortations  and  all  that  kind  of  valuable  machinery  go.  Sometimes, 
however,  we  may  put  all  the  machinery  in  ;  and  speak  an  hour  per- 
haps in  order  to  get  it  in.  Sometimes  we  may  wrestle  on  a  subject 
till  we  exhaust  it,  but  more  often  we  had  better  take  a  lesser  task 
and  treat  just  an  interesting  corner  only  of  the  subject,  getting 
through  in  twenty  minutes,  if  we  have  good  luck.  Why  be  monot- 
onous, I  say  again.  Why  have  certain  doctrines  that  you  dearly 
love  and  build  up  your  experience  on  ;  and  then  feel  like  a  fish  out 
of  water,  if  you  are  not  speaking  on  those.  You  are  a  Calvinist,  I 
will  suppose.  As  likely  as  not  you  are  an  Arminian,  (Arminians  are 
pretty  thick,  the  Methodists  being  responsible  for  making  a  swarm 
of  them)  ;  but  I  will  suppose  that  you  are  a  Calvinist.  So  you  will 
preach  Calvinism.  All  right,  do  it ;  but  the  items  of  agreement 
between  you  and  Arminius  are  more  than  your  items  of  disagree- 
ment ;  therefore,  why  not  multifold  your  preaching  and  ease  your 
hearers,  by  going  over  among  those  items  frequently  ?  Not  merely 
would  you  thus  give  comfort  as  not  seeming  to  them  monotonous, 
and  amaze  your  congregation  by  your  versatility  as  a  man  of  mind, 
but  when  you  got  back  from  your  excursion  among  those  neutral 
items  and  began  to  enforce  your  Calvinism  once  again  on  the  peo- 
ple, you  would  find  that  you  were  impressing  them  decidedly  more 
than  would  have  been  possible,  had  you  stood  by  your  Calvinistic 
specialties  straight  along  and  fed  them  out  to  your  sheep,  unmiti- 
gated and  undiversified  by  perhaps  less  condensed  food.  We  have 
learned  in  physiology,  that  our  nutriment  should  not  be  in  the 
quintessence  form  always,  but  should  be  ameliorated  by  admixtures 
of  lesser  value  and  even  by  a  certain  ratio  of  what  might  be  called 
trash  material,  that  is,  that  cannot  be  assimilated  but  must  go  for 
waste  ;  and  yet  meanwhile  may  serve  some  mechanical,  or  other  use 
in  the  processes  of  our  systems. 

Before  I  leave  this  subject  of  diverse  sermonizing,  among  the 
rules  for  securing  it,  such  as  various  reading  and  all  kinds  of  contact 
with  human  life  as  it  is  and  with  Nature  and  with  Art,  I  would  like 
to  mention  prominently  and  in  fact  put  before  everything  else,  the 
rule  that  you  must  have  contact  at  all  points,  contact  at  all  points 


YALE  LECTURES.  379 

rather  than  a  few,  with  that  world  of  multifarious  material  massed  in 
the  Bible.  At  first,  it  would  seem  as  though  all  ministers  inevitably 
would  have  this  contact  with  the  entire  contents  of  the  Book ;  but 
it  is  not  so.  The  undeniable  presence  in  the  world  of  monotonous 
preaching  proves  that.  Men  could  not  be  monotonous  if  they  had 
possessed  themselves  of  the  universality  of  this  volume,  that  is  if 
they  had  drawn  their  topics  from  all  parts  of  it,  enforcing  upon 
themselves  some  sort  of  system  in  the  matter,  instead  of  going  into 
the  book  hap-hazard  when  they  wanted  a  sermon,  after  the  fashion 
of  the  grab-bag.  Grab-bag  selection  exposes  us  to  the  peril  of 
preaching  our  whole  life  through,  without  using  at  all  some  of  the 
material  that  the  Bible  has  waiting  for  us.  That  is  why  I  took  it 
upon  me  last  year  when  I  was  here,  to  speak  some  kind  words  about 
that  round-and-round  of  contemplations,  prayers,  services  and  ser- 
mons established  and  made  sure  by  the  Christian  Year,  that  device 
of  the  liturgical  communions  of  the  world.  I  said  then,  and  I  say 
now,  that  I  do  not  hold  that  up  as  a  divinely  ordained  curriculum 
at  all ;  I  do  not  even  say  it  is  the  best  one  ;  but  I  insist  that  some 
cycle  or  system  is  necessary,  if  ministers  are  going  to  be  made 
certain  to  preach  on  all  proper  and  good  pulpit  themes,  and  preach 
on  them  with  a  duly  distributed  emphasis  on  each  theme.  Let  a 
preacher  provide  his  own  curriculum,  if  he  does  not  entirely  relish 
one  drawn  out  by  the  church  at  large.  I  am  sure  however,  if  some- 
how he  could  be  induced  to  let  the  godly  wisdom  of  somebody 
besides  himself  be  called  in,  it  would  plainly  appear  in  the  result, 
that  the  godly  wisdom  of  ages  on  ages,  and  millions  on  millions  of 
men — hosts  of  whom  were  exceedingly  well-furnished  men — adds 
up  larger,  as  a  rule,  than  one  man's  single,  solitary  and  lonesome 
wisdom.  But  no  matter  about  that,  if  only  he  will  start  out  to  have 
his  weekly  choice  of  pulpit  subjects  regulated  in  the  main  by  a 
deliberately  chosen  and  previously-established  order,  even  if  it 
must  be  that  nobody  but  himself  deliberately  choose  and  establish 
it,  let  him  move  by  a  doctrinal  order  if  that  suits ;  engaging  with 
himself  to  make  the  circuit  of  all  Christian  doctrine  in  the  course 
of  twelve  months  or  two  years  say,  using  his  Sunday  mornings  for  it, 
and  leaving  his  second  sermon,  each  Sunday,  to  be  given  up  to 
more  miscellaneous  and  disorderly  discoursings.  Let  him  take  his 
liberty,  I  repeat,  as  to  the  particular  order  he  will  obey ;  taking  care 
simply  that  his  pet  order  be  formulated  on  a  Biblical  basis  and 
therefore  includes  all  preachable  things ;    each  preachable  thing 


380  YALE  LECTURES. 

being  magnified  by  him,  or  only  moderately  magnified,  according 
as  it  is  moderately  magnified  or  not  in  Holy  Writ  itself. 

You  understand,  brethren,  I  am  harping  as  I  do  on  a  system- 
atized flow  of  subjects,  with  only  one  thought  in  my  mind,  although 
movement  by  system  has  numbers  of  advantages — only  one  thought, 
namely :  that  if  you  go  by  some  preconsidered  and  thoughtfully 
prepared  cycle,  in  your  preaching,  you  are  likely  to  be  a  man  of 
variety  and  so  far  fascinating  and  not  dull.  Your  cycle,  of  course, 
whatever  form  it  takes,  must  rest  on  the  Bible  as  a  whole  and  not 
on  the  Bible  in  spots ;  therefore  your  multiformity  as  a  preacher 
will  correspond  to  the  almost  illimitable  multiformity  of  the  Bible 
itself.     So  much  as  to  sermons. 

Fifthly,  let  us  look  at  prayers.  And  there  I  touch  more  diffi- 
cult ground.  You  cannot  limber  your  voice  much  in  prayers  and 
secure  variety  in  that  way,  and  you  certainly  cannot  make  many 
gestures ;  and  it  is  preordained  in  the  nature  of  things,  that  prayer 
shall  have  certain  fixed  features,  such  as  confession,  supplication, 
intercession  and  thanksgiving;  and  besides,  if  you  undertake  to 
make  yourself  too  interesting  in  prayer,  by  an  ever-changing  way 
of  treating  confession,  supplication,  intercession  and  thanksgiving, 
you  are  kept  on  such  a  keen  intellectual  and  rhetorical  jump  that 
neither  you  nor  your  congregation  can  really  pray.  As  intellectu- 
alists  and  rhetoricians  you  may  have  a  very  fine  time  indeed  and  be 
something  worth  going  to,  but  as  petitioners  before  God,  you  are  a 
failure  and  a  public  nuisance.  So  then,  as  regards  prayer  many  are 
led  to  say :  Let  the  prayers  of  the  Church  be  written  out  and 
prescribed  ;  let  us  have  just  that  uniformity  and  run  the  risk  of  the 
tedium  of  repetitioners — so  much  risk  as  there  actually  is ;  which 
is  not  much.  But  others,  while  they  admit  the  comparatively  nar- 
row range  for  versatility  in  prayer  to  which  we  are  confined,  proceed 
to  add  :  But  within  that  range,  we  can  legitimately  do  some  things 
to  escape  the  drone  of  sameness ;  for  instance,  we  need  not  make 
a  distinct  effort  to  get  into  the  same  phraseologies  every  Sunday ; 
we  may  avail  ourselves  of  so  much  diversity  of  diction  as  is  natural 
to  us  ;  and  again,  we  may  be  pastorly  in  our  hearts,  so  that  when  we 
are  presenting  to  God  the  case  of  our  people,  we  slip  easily  and 
sweetly  in  to  a  good  deal  of  minuteness  and  have  the  advantage  of 
the  endless  variety  of  minuteness ;  moreover,  if  the  minister  is  as 
religious  as  he  ought  to  be  and  when  he  prays,  moves  in  on  God 
by  the  Holy  Ghost  and  not  by  his  own  impulse,  he  will  always 


YALE   LECTURES.  381 

seem  fresh,  diversified  and  satisfactory,  whether  he  touches  custom- 
ary points  or  uncustomary,  and  whether  his  vocabulary  is  new  every 
Sunday  or  no ;  and  one  of  the  great  advantages  of  extemporized 
prayer  (they  add),  comes  in  there  ;  prayer  in  its  ideal,  as  carrying 
us  into  the  presence  of  the  Most  High  God  and  enforcing  upon  us 
therefore,  particularly,  a  high-type  utterance,  is  such  a  total  impos- 
sibility for  mortal  man,  that  perforce  he  is  thrown  upon  the  aid  of 
the  Holy  Ghost,  and  once  brought  to  that,  it  is  not  possible,  as  was 
said,  that  he  should  be  monotonous  and  uninteresting.  There  may 
be  a  good  share  of  sameness  in  him  from  Sunday  to  Sunday,  his 
bump  of  language  may  be  small  and  his  natural  bump  for  ideas 
may  be  small,  but  an  inspired  man's  small  bump  is  better  than  the 
powerful  bump  of  a  man  uninspired  just  as  Mr.  Moody's  ignorance, 
which  he  once  said  he  had  consecrated  to  God,  is  more  of  a  force 
for  all  the  practical  purposes  of  the  Kingdom  of  God,  than  tons  of 
unconsecrated  learning. 

Thus  runs  the  talk,  pro  and  con.  And  in  the  midst  of  it  we 
must  accept  the  denominational  position  and  pulpit  and  liturgical 
usage  wherein  God  seems  to  place  us,  and  do  the  best  we  can.  My 
own  experience  of  public  prayer  is  hardly  worth  referring  to,  except 
perhaps  as  a  warning ;  but  with  my  tendency  to  amplification,  not 
to  say  inflation,  and  considering,  on  the  other  hand,  the  insatiable 
desire  for  brevity  which  distinguishes  the  modern  congregation,  I 
have  concluded  at  last  to  be  satisfied  if  I  can  get  into  each  prayer 
some  of  the  essential  objective  and  other  elements  of  prayer.  In 
respect  of  the  proper  spirit  in  prayer,  we  assuredly  should  not  be 
satisfied  unless  that  is  in  always  and  every  time ;  but  as  respects 
everything  else,  we  should  not  be  too  hard  upon  ourselves.  I  know 
it  is  a  fallacy  to  say  that  the  Publican's  prayer — "  Lord  be  merciful 
to  me  a  sinner ;"  and  the  prayer  of  the  crucified  malefactor,  "Lord 
remember  me  when  thou  comest  into  thy  kingdom  ;"  and  the  prayer 
of  Peter  sinking  in  the  waters  of  Galilee,  "Lord  save  me" — I  know 
it  is  a  fallacy  to  mention  these  and  like  instances,  as  legitimating 
the  omission  from  public  prayer  of  the  larger  part  of  the  elements 
of  prayer  full  and  complete ;  but  it  is  a  comfort  to  think  of  these 
instances,  nevertheless.  The  thief  on  the  cross  had  not  time  to  go 
through  the  entire  service  of  the  Book  of  Common  Prayer  and 
close  with  a  recessional  hymn  •  neither  had  Peter.  They  were  both 
in  an  emergency.  But  not  much  more  of  an  emergency  than  a 
modern,  extempore  minister  is  in,  leading  the  prayers  of  a  congre- 


382  YALE   LECTURES. 

gation  with  the  remorseless  church  clock  ticking  in  front  of  him  and 
the  modern  man  in  the  pew,  with  watch  in  hand  timing  his  progress. 
The  moral  pressure  on  him  to  get  through  is  strong,  knowing  as  he 
does  that  if  moral  pressure  fails  on  him  and  he  keeps  on  being 
lengthy  from  year  to  year,  by  and  by  physical  pressure  will  take 
the  field  and  carry  him  off  out  of  that  parish.  I  feel  then,  for 
myself,  that  all  I  can  engage  to  do,  as  regards  completeness  of 
prayer  made  interesting  and  profitable  by  due  versatility,  is  to  do 
the  best  I  can.  And  angels  could  do  no  more.  I  will  aim  at  a 
prayerful  spirit.  I  will  aim  to  be  tolerably  brief.  And  as  to  things 
further,  I  will  take  my  chance ;  using  what  intellect,  taste,  power 
of  expression,  pastorly  thoughtfulness,  Biblical  scope  and  so  on, 
I  happen  to  have  at  the  moment  and  throwing  myself  on  the  chari- 
table consideration  of  the  assembly,  be  it  more  or  be  it  less.  It  is 
one  of  the  stock  remarks  of  the  liturgists  though,  that  all  such 
well-meaning  clergymen,  however  inspired,  do  at  last  have  ruts 
in  which  they  move,  though  not  conscious  of  it  always.  All  I 
can  say  is,  I  hope  this  is  a  slander.  Some  of  the  extemporizing 
ministers  reply  that  they  know  it  is.     And  there  I  leave  the  case. 

Sixthly,  how  shall  we  escape  sameness  in  the  administration  of 
ordinances  and  in  the  management  of  ceremonial  occasions  that  are 
not  ordinances  ?  I  think  I  notice  a  growing  disposition  all  around 
not  to  escape  sameness  in  these  matters,  but  to  let  it  in  and  love  it 
and  deal  it  out  to  the  people  and  make  them  likewise  love  it. 
Most  of  the  young  and  old  couples  now-a-days,  in  the  regions  where 
I  live  at  any  rate,  when  they  come  to  the  solemnities  of  wedlock, 
desire  to  be  married  in  the  use  of  some  determinate  office  or  ritual 
that  a  good  many  other  couples  have  used  safely  and  successfully. 
Whether  it  is  that  they  distrust  the  faculties  of  the  clergy,  or  that 
formalism  is  on  the  increase,  or  that  a  wedding  has  come  to  be 
thought  more  of  an  occasion  than  it  used  to  be,  or  that  in  the 
alarming  increase  of  divorce  there  is  a  corresponding  instinctive 
desire  to  forestall  divorce  by  the  introduction  of  more  nuptial  pomp, 
impression  and  nail-fast  ceremony,  I  know  not ;  but  the  drift  is  all 
one  way.  And  I  like  to  humor  it.  I  like  it  for  the  parties  concerned 
and  I  like  it  for  myself.  It  comforts  my  ceremonial  consciousness, 
(whatever  that  may  mean),  to  do  just  as  those  couples  say.  So 
far  as  variety  is  concerned,  every  wedding  is  such  a  fresh  thing, 
in  its  own  self  and  essentially,  that  no  repetitiousness  of  ritual  can 
tame  it  down,  I  find.     A  Sunday's  service  may  be  humdrum  by  the 


YALE  LECTURES.  383 

operation  of  various  causes  ;  but  a  wedding  never.  Every  bride  is 
a  new  instance  of  beauty  and  sweet  expectancy ;  every  bridegroom 
is  more  captivating  than  he  ever  was  before.  Every  wedding  march 
that  the  sympathetic  organ  careers  through  seems  as  good  as  new  ; 
and  then  there  are  the  flowers  and  the  people  and  the  girl's  father 
and  mother,  with  their  hearts  full  of  crying  and  laughing  both ; 
while  all  other  hearts  all  around-about  are  sympathetically  in  much 
the  same  predicament ;  and  now  if,  when  the  rejoicing  organ  stops 
and  the  people  hush  down,  the  minister  lifts  up  his  voice  and  speaks 
forth  an  order  of  words  wherein  you  can  hear  a  sound  of  all  genera- 
tions and  can  feel  the  touch  of  innumerable  like  gracious  occasions, 
do  you  suppose  that  it  necessarily  quenches  that  wedding  ?  I  never 
found  it  so.  It  lies  in  the  very  nature  of  ceremony  to  be  repetitious  ; 
to  follow  well-known,  oft-repeated  lines  of  action  and  utterance.  It 
is  not  possible  to  get  any  ceremoniousness  at  all  in,  on  the  principle 
of  helter-skelter.  Some  extreme  persons,  in  order  to  forestall 
formalism  and  vain-gloriousness,  would  just  deify  helter-skelter  and 
have  that  for  the  one  embellishment  of  what  are  called  occasions ; 
for  instance,  making  all  weddings  different  from  all  others ;  and 
administering  even  the  Sacraments  of  the  Church  in  at  least  so 
much  free-and-easiness  that  the  congregation  cannot  tell  quite  what 
is  coming. 

Well,  speaking  of  ordinances,  it  is  inevitable  that  there  should 
be  a  large  constant  or  unchangeable  element  in  them  all.  That,  at 
any  rate.  To  begin  low  down  and  take  a  perfectly  safe  position,  I 
should  say  that  in  every  infant  baptism  there  must  be  an  infant. 
There  is  no  chance  for  variety  and  originality  and  helter-skelter 
there.  And  there  must  be  some  responsible  person,  or  persons,  to 
present  the  infant.  And  there  must  be  water,  more  or  less.  And 
a  certain  uniform,  unchangeable  act  must  be  performed ;  in  which 
act  certain  ideas  are  involved  always — which  essential  ideas  it  is 
customary  to  express.  Baptism  is  not  an  ever-fluctuating  mere 
show,  but  back  of  all  the  conventional  or  ritual  drapery  of  it,  there 
lies  an  unchangeable  core  of  reality ;  a  great  core  it  is  too,  else  bap- 
tism could  not  keep  up  century  after  century. 

And  similarly,  in  the  Lord's  Supper  there  are  essential  things 
which  can  never  be  changed,  because  they  are  essential.  Helter- 
skelter  must  keep  away. 

But  these  essentials  of  an  ordinance  being  secured,  God  leaves 
us  to  our   freedom,    only   stipulating  that   in   all    our  ceremonial 


384  YALE  LECTURES. 

amplifications  we  keep  in  the  line  of  the  core-realities  of  the  ordi- 
nance and  simply  give  those  core-realities  a  more  voluminous 
expression,  just  as  he  insists  that  a  seed,  if  it  would  not  remain  a 
seed  (as  most  likely  it  would  not),  shall  unfold  itself  in  infallible 
conformity  to  the  vital  idea  or  type  that  is  in  it. 

And  now  since  I  have  spoken  deprecatingly  of  picking  out  pul- 
pit subjects  from  the  Bible  without  any  method,  like  children  blindly 
fingering  in  a  grab-bag,  I  desire  to  be  consistent  and  advise  you  : 
First  and  most  certainly,  not  to  extemporize  on  the  spot  your  ritual 
additions  to  the  core  of  God's  ordinances,  so  that  nobody  can  begin 
to  tell  what  is  impending ;  and  secondly,  if  you  do  not  think  it  best 
to  subject  yourself  verbatim  to  any  ritual  thus  far  devised  by  men 
or  churches  not  to  manufacture  your  ritual  in  any  grand  desire  for 
originality  or  popular  variety,  but  far  otherwise  with  a  reverent  and 
cultured  desire  to  assimilate  your  ceremonial  to  those  great  outline 
features  of  ceremonial,  which  characterize  alike  every  liturgy  ever 
published  by  any  branch  of  the  church  universal. 

You  observe,  my  brethren,  that  I  am  falling  back  again  on  my 
feeling  that  any  ceremonial  occasion,  because  it  is  just  that,  a  ceremo- 
nial occasion  and  not  something  else,  is  entitled  to  a  good  measure  of 
stability  of  procedure  and  must  have  it  if  it  is  not  to  sink  from  a  cere- 
mony, or  even  a  church  ordinance,  into  I  do  not  know  what, — into  a 
thing  of  poor  effect  on  all  beholders  and  participants,  at  all  events. 

Finally,  the  only  remaining  forms  of  possible  and  decent  variety 
in  church  sevices,  that  I  need  to  mention,  are,  a  wide  selection  of 
Scriptural  lessons  ;  a  similar  wide  selection  of  hymns  to  be  sung ;  and 
a  reasonable  use  of  what  may  be  called  special  services ;  praise 
meetings. — anniversaries — services  of  benevolence  or  reform — com- 
memorative meetings  and  others. 

Some  ministers  are  extremely  conservative  in  regard  to  these 
last.  You  cannot  get  into  their  church  buildings  with  your  mass 
meetings  in  furtherance  of  this  and  that.  They  uphold  the  regular, 
orderly  worship  of  the  church,  they  say.  Our  Protestant  Episcopal 
brethren  are  rather  careful  on  that  point.  Others  are  ready  to  let 
in  almost  anything  that  promises  any  good  to  man — to  his  body  or 
his  soul — or  to  any  of  his  interests.  Secular  lectures  may  come  in  ■ 
and  political  assemblies  may  come  in,  if  only  they  have  some  show 
of  moral  intentions ;  and  town  fairs,  educational  conventions,  con- 
ventions to  get  women  their  rights — yes,  the  innumerable  ferment 
of  this  practical,  man-loving  ninteenth  century  may  come  in. 


YALE  LECTURES.  385 

I  think  that  when  these  things  come  along  naturally — the  best 
of  them — they  may  be  accepted  as  a  good  thing  enough  in  the 
sanctuary,  especially  if  the  place  where  we  live  has  no  public-hall ; 
but  I  would  not  artificially  get  up  occasions  for  the  one  purpose  of 
variety,  that  people  may  get  their  religion  in  unusual  and  perhaps 
partially  disguised  forms.  I  do  not  argue  the  matter,  but  leave  it 
there. 

The  selection  of  Scriptures  and  hymns  is  more  important  to  be 
attended  to  ;  but  I  have  already  laid  down  the  principles  that  should 
govern  that.  Half  the  time,  when  I  exchange  pulpits  with  a  brother 
minister,  I  find  when  I  get  home  that  he  has  given  out  to  my  people 
some  hymn  that  I  never  did.  I  look  that  hymn  over  and  get  some 
one  to  play  or  sing  to  me  the  tune  to  which  it  is  set  in  our  church 
book  and  I  find  probably  that  it  is  as  good  as  many  hymns  which  I 
have  given  out.  Thereupon  I  reflect  afresh  on  my  own  limitations 
and  wonder  why  I  am  not  more  all-ranging  than  I  am.  I  tell  you, 
brethren,  we  all  need  watching  lest  we  grow  narrow  and  set  and 
therefore  stupid,  in  our  preferences  and  tastes.  A  private  man  may 
grow  stupid  if  he  wants  to,  but  a  minister  must  not,  because  if  he 
does,  this  stupidity  of  his  is  the  measure  and  limit  of  the  opportu- 
nities of  a  whole  congregation.  They  have  to  sing  his  narrowly- 
selected  few  hymns.  And  they  have  to  hear,  mark,  learn  and 
inwardly  digest  his  ever-recurring  little  round  of  Scriptural  read- 
ings ;  the  copious,  round-about,  all-sided,  mighty  Word  and  Book 
of  God,  being  scrimped  to  the  dimensions  of  his  individuality  and 
not  suffered  to  speak  with  more  than  half  its  voices.  I  consider  an 
established  lectionary  as  an  almost  necessary  thing  in  all  churches. 
Let  alone  in  this  presence — this  strong  congregational  presence — 
the  question  who  shall  establish  the  lectionary ;  there  ought  to  be 
one.  The  Congregational  Conference  in  this  State  of  Connecticut 
ought  to  issue  one  for  our  state  ministers  to  look  at.  They  need 
not  worship  it — that  would  be  uncongregational — but  they  could 
look  at  it  and  offer  themselves  to  be  enticed  by  it ;  and  the  beauty 
of  it  is,  they  could  use  it  and  their  peoples  know  it  not.  Perhaps 
the  greatest  difficulty  in  the  way  of  such  a  movement  is,  that  so 
many  of  our  ministers  are  under  the  impression  that  the  sermon 
they  have  in  the  pulpit  with  them,  must  determine  the  lesson  that 
shall  be  read  that  day.  Unity  of  impression  requires  that,  they 
fancy ;  whereas  it  would  be  an  aid  to  impression  if  they  did  not 
make  the  lessons,  the  hymns  and  all  the  prayers,  revolve  around 


386  YALE  LECTURES. 

that  one  manuscript,  even  as  it  would  have  been  an  aid  to  every 
interest  involved  if  that  minister  who  made  everything  revolve 
around  the  communion  service,  as  I  explained  to  you,  had  diversified 
the  occasion  more. 

But  why  do  not  we  all  use  the  well-considered  and  wide-sweep- 
ing lectionary  of  the  Protestant  Episcopal  Church  ?  Because  that 
scheme  of  Lessons  is  grounded  on  the  Christian  Year — an  invention 
which  we  all  respect  as  a  well-intentioned  effort  to  provide  an  ample 
and  thoroughly  Christian  cultus,  but  which  for  historical  and  other 
reasons  many  of  us  have  not  adopted  and  perhaps  never  shall.  So 
then,  we  had  better  begin  to  make  a  lesson-order  of  our  own  and 
see  how  we  come  out.  If  we  come  out  as  well  as  the  Episcopalians 
have  and  furnish  for  ourselves  a  round  of  readings,  wherein  all  parts 
of  the  Bible  are  honored,  we  need  not  be  ashamed,  whatever  prin- 
ciple of  selection  we  adopt.  But  I  want  something.  I  want  it  for 
myself.  I  want  to  see  my  Brethren  in  it.  I  want  to  have  you 
young  ministers  put  through  that  orderly  march  and  to  see  you 
absorb  the  insensible  culture  of  it  and  become  Catholic  in  your 
taste  and  Biblical,  rather  than  denominational  in  your  theology,  fat 
with  the  fatness  of  many  foods  rather  than  lean  and  grim  through 
feeding  on  this  or  that  special  food. 

For  the  man  who  has  established  his  lectionary,  by  the  logic  of 
the  case  has  therein  established  the  course  of  his  sermonizing  also ; 
or  what  is  the  same  thing,  the  course  of  his  thinking ;  the  shape 
therefore  of  his  entire  religious  development. 

I  leave  these  freely-spoken  thoughts  with  you,  dear  brethren,  to 
sift,  expurgate,  chew  upon  and  charge  against  me,  if  need  be. 


ROUTINE:    ITS  PERILS  AND  ITS 
VALUES. 


At  first  I  looked  for  a  better  word  than  routine  to  describe 
what  I  am  after;  for  so  many  people  and  ministers  have  come 
under  the  supreme  influence  of  the  Perils  of  Routine,  that  the  term 
itself  has  a  meanish  kind  of  savor,  and  it  makes  one  draw  a  tired, 
long  breath,  just  to  hear  the  sound  of  it.  But  I  found  it  was  the 
best  I  could  do,  all  things  considered,  and  so  I  move  out  and  forth 
under  the  burden  of  it.  However,  in  its  use  I  shall  refer  simply  to 
a  fixed  round-and-round.  It  does  not  hurt  the  planets  to  go  round 
and  round,  neither  does  it  hurt  the  Maker  of  the  planets  to  have 
them  do  it ;  and  it  seems  to  be  proven,  therefore,  at  the  very  begin- 
ning, that  routine  is  not  necessarily  bad.  It  is  bad  or  not,  just 
according  to  the  creature  that  is  in  the  round-and-round.  The 
right  kind  of  a  man  or  minister  finds  it  beautiful,  is  as  happy  in  it 
as  the  stars  in  their  courses,  and  as  much  helped  along. 

I  wish,  friends,  you  would  consider  this  gigantic,  multiplex, 
eternal,  circularity  over  our  heads  here  in  the  sky,  and  all  about, 
and  let  it  prepossess  you  a  little  in  favor  of  Routine.  It  is  a  curious 
and  fascinating  circumstance  that  God  has  builded  his  universe  to 
go  in  ever-repeated  circles  so  much.  On  the  face  of  it,  it  looks  as 
though  the  curve  had  something  in  it  essentially  delightful  to  his 
mind ;  and  that  the  countless  whirl  of  things  along  their  curved 
paths  in  such  a  wide  immensity  and  in  such  perilous-looking,  hair- 
breadth ins-and-outs  among  themselves,  were  a  most  satisfactory 
spectacle  to  his  eyes,  he  being  able,  such  is  his  boundless  faculty,  to 
contemplate  it  in  its  magnificent  entirety  at  a  glance,  rather  than 
pick  it  up  in  laborious  piecemeal  as  our  wretched  little  faculties  do. 


388  YALE  LECTURES. 

I  know  it  would  fairly  intoxicate  a  man  to  look  down  on  some  good- 
sized  handiwork  of  his  own  like  that  and  watch  the  interplay  of  the 
thing,  the  junctures  made  by  the  many  movements,  and  get  the 
perfect  harmony  and  co-ordination  all  through  :  all  set  in  cycles 
also,  and  the  eternal  grace  of  cycles.  I  never  heard  that  there  was 
any  mechanical  difficulty  in  setting  up  a  universe  on  the  rectangular 
principle  mainly,  with  its  endless  jerks  on  the  feeling  of  all  behold- 
ers. Neither  can  I  imagine  that  there  would  have  been  any  mechani- 
cal difficulty  or  any  inability  whatever,  as  respects  the  measure  of 
God's  power,  in  fashioning  and  running  a  creation  wherein  the  fact 
of  a  thing's  having  occurred  once — as  the  rising  of  the  sun,  or  the 
flood  of  the  tide — would  be  sure  proof  that  that  same  thing  would 
never  occur  again  to  all  eternity.  The  inconvenience  of  such  a 
creation  as  that  in  the  matter  of  laying  our  practical  plans,  and  the 
sense  of  insecurity  and  apprehension  which  it  would  shed  abroad 
in  men's  minds,  would  be  something,  evidently ;  for  example  if  I 
agreed  to  lecture  here  at  three  o'clock,  and  on  arriving  here  found 
that  the  sun  had  not  yet  risen,  and  so  far  as  heard  from  might  not 
rise  for  a  week,  or  perhaps  a  year,  or  possibly  never,  having  gone 
off  to  the  outposts  of  God's  realm  as  though  on  some  mysterious 
lark — the  inconvenience  and  anxiety,  I  say,  of  such  an  infinite 
organization  of  desultoriness  as  that  would  have  been  painful ;  but 
such  an  organization  would  have  been  practicable,  I  take  it,  to  a 
being  of  infinite  power.  It  would  have  only  been  universalizing 
what  is  supposed  to  occur  in  the  case  of  a  miracle ;  that  unforsee- 
able  irruption  among  the  fine  old  and  much  beloved  uniformities  of 
Nature.  But  our  God  is  no  such  a  person  as  that.  It  is  constitu- 
tional with  him  to  be  a  routinist  considerably,  and  he  has  so  made 
us  that  it  is  both  a  pleasure  and  a  necessity  to  be  routinists  too. 
And  this  natural  predisposition  to  circularity  in  the  Maker  of 
all  things,  after  it  had  embodied  itself  in  great  Nature  and  in  the 
structure  of  man,  was  sure  to  manifest  itself  in  other  fields  of  God's 
activity.  Therefore,  in  the  only  recorded  instance  where  he  has 
definitely  and  minutely  expressed  his  mind  in  regard  to  human 
public  worship  of  him  ;  he  has  assimilated  the  worship  to  the  cycles 
of  the  firmament — that  first,  as  was  naturally  to  be  expected — then 
next  as  could  not  so  easily  have  been  anticipated,  he  started  rota- 
tions of  sevens ;  seven  days,  seven  years,  seven  times  seven  years ; 
a  whole  miscellany  of  sevens  round-and-round,  thus  giving  an  arti- 
ficial sanctity  to  the  number  seven  forever.     The  number  three  also 


YALE   LECTURES.  389 

got  in.  And  in  every  substantial  respect,  that  old  Jewish  cultus 
was  methodical  and  repetitious  to  the  last  degree.  When  the  priest 
in  the  temple  had  done  a  thing,  or  a  definite  set  and  circuit  of 
things,  he  had  to  go  over  it  all  again,  verbatim,  and  the  priests 
themselves  had  their  turns  and  relays  of  service  in  a  fixed  math- 
ematical order  of  hours  and  days.  These  orders,  cycles,  mystical 
sevens  and  all  the  rest ;  these  holy  and  sweet  routines,  could  be 
converted  into  the  numbness  and  tiresomeness  of  routine  in  an  evil 
sense ;  and  the  Prophet  Isaiah  in  his  first  chapter  has  opened  him- 
self out  on  that  with  a  wholesome  rage  ;  nevertheless,  the  God  of 
the  orderly  firmament  took  the  responsibility  of  being  orderly  also 
(orderly  and  repetitious)  in  the  worship  which  he  appointed,  and  if 
men  turn  his  good  thing  into  an  offence,  on  them  be  the  curse. 

I  want  to  speak  for  a  moment  rather  analytically  on  the  special 
risks  of  any  round-and-round. 

We  are  so  made — and  I  am  glad  we  are — that  habitual  action 
— action  in  a  much  repeated  circuit  of  action — tends  to  become 
automatic  ;  and  the  bad  feature  of  automatic  action  (on  its  religious 
side)  is  that  it  tends  to  be  unreflective,  inattentive,  mechanical, 
formalistic,  and  does  not  sense  what  it  is  about.  For  example — an 
automatic  man — a  man  who  has  prayed  to  God  innumerable  times 
and  got  dreadfully  used  to  it  so  that  he  has  only  to  start  his  prayer 
and  the  prayer  runs  on,  hums  and  drones  of  itself — that  man  does 
not  feel  whose  presence  he  is  in,  and  whom  he  is  speaking  to.  An 
automatic  minister  converses  with  people  about  their  souls,  and 
pretty  much  forgets  all  the  while,  the  serious  and  tender  realities 
he  is  handling.  An  automatic  ritualist  travels  through  the  sufficiently 
excellent  book  of  worship  in  his  hand  on  any  given  Sunday,  with 
so  little  conscious  impression  on  his  dulled  feeling  as  he  passes 
along  that  he  comes  to  the  end  with  only  a  hazy  self-satisfaction  as 
having  wound  his  way  through  an  appointed  opus  operatum  spell, 
a  deft  sort  of  contrivance  for  blessing  souls  without  their  knowing 
it;  that  as  distinguished  from  a  recollected,  volitional,  attent  and 
consciously  receptive  march  from  step  to  step  of  the  service.  And 
the  greatest  suggestion  that  we  non-liturgical  people  make  against 
printed  rituals,  is  that  they  produce  human  automata  too  much  ;  the 
very  persons  that  Isaiah  in  his  first  chapter  made  his  terrible  stroke 
at.  That  is  what  we  say,  but  of  course  the  automata  referred  to 
are  wide-awake  enough  yet  to  strike  back. 

An  automatic  theologian  is  a  man  who  has  a  definite,  limited 


390  YALE   LECTURES. 

set  of  first-class  doctrines,  perhaps  the  sacred  seven,  perhaps  the 
partially  sacred  three  or  five,  on  which  he  has  run  his  mind  around 
at  the  same  gait  three  hundred  thousand  times ;  until  now  if  he 
be  started — whether  by  himself,  by  the  nudge  of  an  antagonist,  or 
by  a  sudden  wind,  he  goes  the  same  track  without  the  ghost  of  a 
volition  in  his  own  mind  to  help  him  along,  but  simply  as  an  expert 
plays  a  piano ;  with  no  voluntary  touch  of  this,  that  and  the  other 
key,  as  is  proven  by  the  fact  that  at  the  same  time  he  is  playing, 
this  expert  can  carry  on  a  conversation,  or  read  a  book,  or  absorb 
himself  in  a  game  of  chess.  It  is  easy  to  see  where  his  mind  is. 
It  is  on  those  other  things.  Therefore  it  is  not  on  his  playing. 
That  playing  is  done  by  his  unconscious  self;  that  artificial  and 
second  self  which  has  been  created  by  diligent  routine.  Well,  this 
theologian  referred  to,  this  finely  developed  machine,  as  he  does 
not  run  by  conscious  intelligence,  so  he  is  not  accessible  to  the 
attacks  of  intelligence  from  the  outside.  You  cannot  upset  his 
theology.  Neither  can  you  modify  it.  Neither  can  you  cause  it  to 
expand  from  its  own  core,  and  be  itself,  yet  bigger.  That  would 
be  contrary  to  the  genius  of  iteration  and  automatism.  Automatism 
in  man  is  parallel  to  instinct  in  animals.  The  animals  are  born 
with  their  instincts,  while  men  get  up  their  automatism  by  force  of 
routine.  But,  once  gotten  up,  it  is  instinct  over  again  pretty  much. 
The  little  duck  just  out  of  his  shell  runs  to  the  water  infallibly.  If 
he  were  omniscient,  he  could  not  do  it  more  surely.  But  that 
duck  is  not  omniscient.  He  is  not  even  reasonable.  Therefore 
you  cannot  reason  with  him.  He  would  remain  a  duck,  even  if 
Jonathan  Edwards  took  him  in  hand.  Well,  he  ought  to.  But  that 
is  not  the  reason  that  he  does.  No,  he  has  no  reason.  I  do 
not  complain  of  him.  I  only  protest  against  his  being  called 
intelligent. 

Now,  wherein  does  the  theological  automaton  differ  from  the 
duck?  In  some  particulars  no  doubt.  First  of  all,  he  was  not 
born  so.  God  forbid.  He  originally  selected  his  theology  in  the 
exercise  of  more  or  less  mind.  Perhaps  he  reasoned  on  it  a  good 
deal.  Perhaps  he  took  it  by  inheritance.  Perhaps  he  was  not 
capable  of  real  reasoning,  but  was  capable  of  fumbling  or  trying  to 
reason  and  his  theology  is  a  resultant  of  his  rumblings,  taken  in  the 
aggregate.  But,  whether  in  one  way  or  another,  he  did  secure  his 
theology,  and  then  he  began  to  convert  himself  into  our  automaton. 
He  ran  his  theological  scheme  through  his  mind  over  and  over  year 


YALE   LECTURES.  391 

after  year,  with  such  sameness  of  argument,  meditation  and  what 
not,  and  with  such  inattention  to  all  distracting  side-lights  and  new 
lights,  that  at  last  his  whole  nature  (thus  mysteriously  are  we  made) 
began  to  keep  step  to  the  tune  of  it,  and  now  that  nature  of  his  is 
like  that  cork  leg,  so  famous  in  song  ;  it  runs  itself.  Say,  Predesti- 
nation, and  off  it  goes.  Say,  Free-Will ;  Say,  Irresistible  Grace ; 
say  a  dozen  different  things  that  I  might  mention,  and  it  acts  like  a 
hist-a-boy  to  that  automaton.  It  winds  him  up  and  he  buzzes  till  he 
runs  down.  Or  considering  him  as  a  duck,  he  blindly  starts  for  the 
water.  What  was  not  instinct  in  him  at  first,  but  a  show  of  reason, 
is  pure  instinct  now.  I  do  not  say  he  should  not  take  to  water,  or 
to  speak  literally,  that  he  ought  not  to  hold  to  his  theology ;  but  I 
say  he  should  not  hold  it  automatically.  He  did  not  start  it  so. 
He  started  his  theology  like  a  flexible  human  being.  He  thought — 
more  or  less,  as  I  have  said  before — he  paused,  he  inquired,  he 
asked  his  neighbors  perhaps,  ,|he  prayed  about  the  matter,  and  a 
thing  that  started  in  that  way,  why  should  it  not  be  kept  up  in  that 
way  ?  If  the  way  was  good  enough  to  begin  with,  it  is  good  enough 
to  keep  on  with.  He  is  older  now  than  he  was  at  first,  and  he  has 
more  neighbors  to  ask,  and  more  light  has  had  time  to  break  forth 
out  of  God's  holy  word  ;  the  Book  has  even  been  revised  since  he 
began  to  be  an  automaton ;  and  he  is  losing  all  this,  and  how  can 
theology  ever  make  any  advance  either  in  him  or  in  the  world,  if 
things  are  to  be  carried  on  in  his  fashion  ? 

Moreover,  if  he  ever  undertakes  to  preach,  the  people  will  not 
be  stimulated  by  him.  They  know  a  machine  when  they  hear  the 
creak  of  it.  They  know  that  the  speaking  automaton  up  there 
does  not  himself  intensely  taste  the  ideas  that  he  is  promulging. 
They  know,  too,  that  those  words  of  his  are  not  the  live  product  of 
his  mind  on  the  spot,  as  fresh  to  him  and  as  delightfully  flavored  to 
his  perceiving  taste,  as  though  no  one  had  ever  thought  of  them 
before  ;  much  less  used  them.  For  an  automatic  thinker  is  likely 
to  be  an  automatic  rhetorician.  He  uses  the  words  that  conven- 
tionalism dictates ;  he  has  heard  them  all  his  life,  and  spoken  them 
all  his  life,  and  worn  all  their  original  bloom  off  and  totally  lost  their 
sap  and  the  thrill  of  their  root-meanings,  and  he  handles  them  and 
tosses  them  off  as  so  many  dead  things ;  they  are  dead  to  himself; 
and  dead  to  his  hearers  because  dead  to  him.  I  cannot  explain  it, 
but  so  it  is,  a  man  who  does  not  reach  the  tongue  of  his  mind  down 
the  whole  length  of  the  deep  significance,  physical,  historical  and 


392  YALE   LECTURES. 

associational,  of  every  term  he  uses  in  his  public  utterance,  as  the 
humming  bird  probes  the  heart  of  the  flower  with  a  quiver  of  de- 
light, cannot  pass  those  words  of  his  over  into  listening  minds  in  a 
way  to  start  them  into  any  particular  quiver. 

In  expounding  to  you,  as  I  now  have,  the  insensibility  and 
unconsciousness  of  mental  movements  automatically  carried  on,  to 
which  automatism  routine  undoubtedly  tends,  I  have  said  the  prin- 
cipal thing  that  can  be  said  against  routine.  Still,  I  would  like  to 
add  a  word  more  in  the  same  line.  If  a  minister  confines  himself 
to  the  duties  of  his  profession  entirely,  to  sermonizing  and  pastor- 
izing  in  their  never-ceasing  circuit,  under  the  impression  perhaps 
that  it  is  his  duty  to  do  so,  or  possibly  because  by  long  separation 
from  other  things  he  has  lost  all  relish  for  other  things  ;  it  will 
surely  hum-drum  him  by  and  by,  lessen  his  vigor,  lessen  his  zest, 
lessen  the  elan  of  his  attacks ;  and  lessen  public  interest  in  him. 
The  subjects  we  treat  are  large  and  many  sided,  the  human  interests 
we  manipulate  are  the  supreme  interests  of  life,  and  have  in  them 
great  pathos  and  great  fascination ;  nevertheless  we  must  range  be- 
yond our  parish  and  our  preaching  a  good  deal,  if  we  are  not  going 
to  lose  our  spring.  We  must  read  something  beside  theology. 
Poetry  will  be  good  for  us.  Fiction  will  be  good  for  us  in  well- 
chosen  doses.  We  should  hear  music.  We  should  look  into  books 
of  science.  We  should  luxuriate  in  pictures.  We  should  visit  Wall 
street.  We  should  go  down  to  the  sea  in  ships.  We  should  have 
a  very  diversified  circle  of  acquaintances  ;  and  be  sure  not  to  have 
them  all  alike.  Some  of  them  may  be  saints,  but  they  need  not  all 
be.  Some  of  them  may  be  sombre,  but  some  of  them  should  be 
humorous,  and  occasionally  one  may  even  be  of  the  twittering  sort. 
Birds  twitter,  and  bird-like  natures  always  may.  As  I  came  along  to 
this  point  in  my  lecture,  I  paused  and  began  to  run  over  in  my 
mind  the  names,  faces,  manners,  dress,  character  and  history  of 
those  whom  I  know,  crony  with,  and  depend  on ;  and  I  declare  to 
you  it  was  almost  as  good  as  a  three  day's  outing  to  drop  on  to 
each  one  in  that  way,  and  fondly  analyze  them  all.  Human  beings 
are  exceedingly  interesting.  And  they  are  put  up  in  such  different 
shapes  !  Under  the  general  sameness,  of  course,  that  belongs  to 
human  nature,  you  find  on  a  genial  inspection  and  shape  of  each 
such  an  infinite  miscellany  of  attributes,  traits,  idiosyncrasies,  in- 
firmities and  pleasant  forms  of  perverseness,  as  are  partly  comi- 
cal, partly  touching,  partly  amazing,  partly  admirable  and  partly 


YALE   LECTURES.  393 

frightful  besides.  At  any  rate  it  is  good  to  go  among  them.  There 
are  two  kinds  of  recreation.  One  is  to  go  to  sleep,  or  what  is  the 
same  thing,  fold  your  hands,  half-close  your  eyes,  sit  around  and  be 
stupid  and  let  your  nature  carry  on  her  insensible  and  unsearchable 
recuperations  in  you.  The  other  way  of  recreation  is  to  keep 
awake  and  keep  pretty  bright  and  simply  move  your  mind  around 
on  things  that  you  are  not  used  to,  things  outside  of  your  profession  ; 
public  entertainments,  excursions,  "hunting,  fishing  and  war,"  as 
we  used  to  read  in  the  old  geographies.  And  especially  upon  the 
face  of  Nature  do  you  move  around — move  slowly;  loaf;  Nature 
takes  loafers  into  her  arms  and  loves  them,  prefers  them  and  tells 
them  things  and  soaks  her  own  peace  into  them  and  smooths  out 
their  seemingly  hopeless  kinks  and  hushes  their  nerves  and  elimi- 
nates from  their  make-up  their  artificialities  and  twists  of  dishonesty 
that  they  get  in  society  and  sends  them  back  home  feeling  like  a 
wood-nymph.     That  is  my  experience. 

Recreation  by  diversifying  your  mental  action  !  That  is  the 
idea.  One  night  last  week  when  I  was  writing  this  lecture,  it  sud- 
denly staled  on  me.  But  I  went  off  that  evening  to  the  regular 
meeting  of  the  Liturgical  Club,  to  which  I  belong ;  a  club  made  up 
of  three  kinds  of  clerical  men ;  Episcopalians,  Catholic  Apostolic 
ministers  and  a  more  feeble  number  of  Congregationalists ;  and  I 
watched  the  play  of  their  strongly  contrary  individualities  for  some 
two  hours,  and  played  my  own  individuality  too  a  little,  and  went 
home  as  good  as  new — and  the  next  morning  this  tedious  lecture 
fairly  blossomed  again. 

That  is  the  way  it  works.  Do  not  wear  yourself  out  in  routines 
of  labor. 

And  I  may  add — do  not  become  so  entirely  a  routinist  in  your 
work,  especially  in  your  intellectual  work,  that  if  it  so  happens 
some  time  that  you  are  called  on  to  do  work  outside  of  your  dear 
routine,  it  will  nearly  incapacitate  you.  Some  ministers  cannot 
much  more  than  half  think,  except  as  they  are  in  their  own  library 
and  at  their  own  desk.  And  some  ministers  can  not  preach  with 
any  freedom  and  power  in  a  strange  pulpit  or  on  an  open  platform 
or  at  a  street  corner.  It  has  been  true  of  some  lawyers  that  they 
could  not  make  an  argument,  if  they  could  not  have  something  to 
twirl  in  their  fingers  while  speaking.  A  great  many  public  speakers, 
(preachers  generally  they  are,)  have  a  regular  motion  of  their  body 
which  has  come  to  be  necessary  to  the  facile  action  of  their  intellects 
26 


394  YALE   LECTURES. 

— they  rest  on  one  foot  and  then  on  the  other — or  they  turn  their 
heads  so  and  then  so  and  then  so  again,  or  they  oscillate  in  a  balance, 
now  on  their  heels  and  now  on  their  toes,  or  they  keep  their  hands 
traveling  monotonously,  or  they  make  some  particular  and  perhaps 
eccentric  gesture  with  one  hand,  while  if  that  hand  were  tied  behind 
their  back  it  would  end  all  further  possibility  of  intelligent  utterance. 
It  is  not  well  to  be  a  slave  to  routine. 

I  call  your  attention  now  to  the  second  general  head  of  my 
discourse,  namely  :  The  value  of  routine.  I  put  value  last  and 
give  it  the  advantage  of  a  last  mention,  because  I  want  to  make 
my  greatest  impression  with  that,  for,  be  the  perils  of  routine  what 
they  may,  I  think  you  had  better  have  them  for  the  sake  of  the 
values  mentioned.     Well  then  listen  while  I  recount  those  values. 

First,  in  the  matter  of  your  church  services — and  perhaps  in 
some  of  your  other  official  services — it  is  a  comfort  to  your  people 
to  have  you  a  calculable  man,  not  like  that  suppositious  sun  which  I 
mentioned  as  not  having  risen  yet  when  I  reached  here  at  three 
o'clock  to  lecture  ;  nor  even  like  a  comet,  which  is  sure  to  come 
sometime  but  nobody  so  far  knows  when  ;  but  rather  like  our  actual 
old  trustworthy  sun,  the  orb  that  is  always  on  time,  not  behind-hand 
and  not  before-hand  and  always  just  about  so  hot  in  summer  and 
less  hot  in  winter,  always  keeping  his  appointments  with  the  other 
orbs,  so  that  they  all  love  him  and  can  pre-arrange  their  daily  and 
yearly  affairs  on  the  solid  ground  of  his  foreknown  fidelities.  That 
is  the  kind  of  minister  to  be,  if  you  are  to  have  the  hearts  of  your 
people.  They  want  to  know  whether  you  are  going  to  call  on  them 
in  the  church  to  keep  Easter  in  the  Spring  somewhere,  or  at  Christ- 
mas time — whether  at  an  infant  baptism  you  will  have  an  infant 
present  or  not — whether  the  ritual  for  morning  and  evening  service 
which  you  have  been  moving  in  for  some  time,  is  likely  to  be  turned 
end  for  end  some  Sunday,  or  totally  supplanted  by  some  new  order, 
and  whether  in  these  total  supplantings,  as  they  promiscuously  come 
along,  a  philosopher  could  discover  any  regulative  principles  of 
before  and  after  in  the  flow  of  the  details. 

It  is  a  great  advantage  to  your  people  to  have  you  methodize 
your  activities  and  functions  to  a  certain  extent.     That  first. 

Secondly,  it  is  a  great  advantage  to  yourself.  Not  to  mention 
the  satisfaction  of  noticing  that  your  people  are  contentedly  resting 
down  on  your  orderly  faithfulness,  you  can  do  more  work  and  do 
it  easier  on  system,  than  you  can  on  spurt,  lawlessness  and  disorder. 


YALE   LECTURES.  395 

That  is  often  said;  and  it  is  true.  And  I  am  going  to  tell  why. 
There  are  several  wherefores. 

If  you  have  a  method  and  stand  to  it  every  time  you  make  the 
circuit  of  that  method,  your  mind  and  body  both  do  more  and  more 
catch  the  run  of  it,  get  used  to  it,  fashion  themselves  to  it  and  have 
it  for  their  second  nature,  their  instinct,  yes,  their  automatism.  I 
have  reviled  automatism  in  certain  connections,  but  now  I  am  going 
to  praise  it.  There  certainly  are  many  kinds  of  work  where  the 
automatic  principle  is  good  enough.  There  are  even  many  kinds 
that  cannot  be  at  all  performed  except  as  that  principle  is  brought 
in.  Let  me  illustrate  that.  The  shortest  cut  between  any  point  in 
the  high  air  and  a  given  point  on  the  ground,  is  a  curve,  not  a 
straight  line  but  a  curve  ;  and  the  hawk,  when  he  dives  for  his  prey, 
always  travels  that  curve.  He  does  it  by  instinct.  If  he  had  to  do 
it  as  taught  by  some  professor  of  mathematics,  he  would  fail.  And 
if  his  mind  were  as  large  as  Plato's,  instead  of  being  nothing  but  a 
hawk's  mind,  it  would  not  alter  anything ;  he  simply  could  not  keep 
that  ideal  line.  Mere  reason  is  not  equal  to  finding  its  way  practi- 
cally along  that  curve.  The  passage  must  be  made  automatically. 
It  must  be  in  the  hawk  structurally  and  congenitally  so  to  do. 

Similarly,  if  Dr.  Carver,  when  hundreds  of  glass  balls  are  thrown 
into  the  air,  is  going  to  catch  every  one  of  them  on  the  wing  with  his 
rifle  and  break  them,  or  if  the  pianist  is  to  rush  through  his  complex, 
amazing  fingerings  with  his  eyes  shut  and  his  thoughts  at  the  ends 
of  the  earth  and  with  no  more  consciousness  of  directing  that  finger- 
work  than  though  he  were  dead ;  or  if  Mr.  Blondin  is  to  walk  on  a 
rope  in  the  air  across  Niagara  and  wheel  a  wheel-barrow  along  the 
rope  and  for  aught  I  know  wheel  himself  in  his  wheel-barrow,  and 
all  in  a  poise  as  assured  and  safe  as  your  poise  when  you  tread  a 
side-walk ;  then  in  lack  of  any  instinct  for  such  astonishing  doings, 
the  men  must  drill  themselves  till  they  get  up  an  instinct ;  they 
must  routine  and  routine  and  routine,  I  do  not  know  how  many 
hundreds  of  times ;  routine  their  muscles  and  their  whole  bodily 
apparatus  ;  routine  their  perceptive  faculties  ;  routine  their  concen- 
tration ;  routine  their  entire  selves  in  fact,  until  the  greater  part  by 
far  of  their  performance  has  passed  beyond  the  lines  of  voluntary 
action  clear  out  into  absolute  mechanicalism  and  they  are  scarcely 
more  than  hawks  diving  instinctively  down  the  air  short-cut. 

There  are  many  amazing  achievements,  like  rope-walking,  or 
the  feats  of  gymnasts  in  the  arena,  or  the  miracles  performed  by  the 


396  YALE   LECTURES. 

sleight-of-hand  man,  which  at  first  thought  we  should  call  physical 
wonders  merely,  and  therefore  illustrations  simply  of  the  great  spon- 
taneity of  action  to  which  the  body  may  be  brought  by  long  practice  ; 
but  really  there  is  as  much  mind  as  body  in  these  doings,  and  the 
possibility  of  mental  spontaneity  at  last  is  also  illustrated  by  them. 
When  somebody  walks  the  rope,  he  does  not  do  it  in  the  use  of  the 
same  kind  of  mental  faculties  that  Milton  used  when  he  wrote  Para- 
dise Lost,  or  the  lawyer  uses  in  a  great  argument,  or  the  preacher 
in  his  great  discourse,  or  the  high-class  mathematician  in  some 
abstract  discovery  that  he  makes  ;  but  that  man  up  there  on  the 
rope  uses  mind  after  all  and  what  mind  he  does  use,  he  uses  con- 
summately. It  is  faculty  in  absolute  drill  and  scarcely  less  infallible 
than  the  hawk's  instinct  rushing  along  his  curve.  Moreover  it  is  the 
same  grade  of  faculty  that  the  carpenter  uses  when,  with  his  trained 
eye,  he  makes  instant  judgment  on  such  matters  as  size,  form  and 
distance  ;  or  that  the  marksmen  uses  for  similar  purposes,  or  that 
even  the  painter  uses  when  he  arranges  spaces,  vistas,  dimensions, 
heights  and  the  like  on  his  canvas.  Moreover,  there  is  a  fine  exhi- 
bition of  disciplined  will  in  the  rope-walking,  that  steady  will ;  con- 
trolling muscle  and  nerve  and  the  natural  terrors  of  the  mind,  was 
not  born  such  a  will  as  that ;  it  was  born  like  all  other  wills,  pliable, 
timid  and  fluctuating  ;  but  having  been  put  upon  its  mettle  daily  for 
years  and  years,  all  those  congenital  infirmities  have  been  worked 
out  of  it  and  there  now  it  is,  ruling  the  difficulties  of  the  occasion 
and  facing  awful  perils  without  the  least  conscious  effort. 

So  then,  it  is  not  a  bodily  automatism  alone  that  we  are  called 
to  study  and  admire  in  these  cases  of  skill  and  nerve,  but  a  mental 
automatism  quite  as  much ;  in  other  words,  a  manikin  on  the  rope 
in  the  gymnastic  arena,  or  in  the  sleight  of  hand,  could  not  begin  to 
do  what  the  man  does ;  and  therefore  while  in  these  cases  we  are 
made  to  know  the  wonderful  perfectibility  of  the  human  body  by 
dint  of  routine  practice,  we  are  quite  as  certainly  made  to  know  the 
perfectibility  of  our  intellectual  parts  by  the  same  means  and  (by 
analogy)  of  our  moral  parts.  If  the  several  perceptive  faculties 
which  these  physical  experts  bring  into  the  field  when  they  perform^ 
can  be  made  such  exceedingly  capable  faculties,  especially  if  they  can 
be  brought  to  operate  in  such  entire  unconsciousness  of  effort  at  the 
moment — yes  more  than  that,  if  they  can  be  brought  to  act  absolutely 
well,  even  if  the  man  turns  his  attention  completely  away  to  other 
matters,  then  we  are  prepared  to  believe  that  men  can  be  worked 


YALE   LECTURES.  397 

along,  or  routined  along — for  it  is  routine  that  does  it — until  they 
shall  operate  in  a  similar,  non-voluntary,  unlaborious,  automatic  man- 
ner, throughout  the  entire  range  of  their  higher  attributes ;  that  is, 
let  a  man  concentrate  himself  on  the  discipline  of  any  one  of  his 
native  powers  and  subject  that  selected  power  of  his  nature  to  the 
tremendous  influence  of  a  duly-protracted  round-and-round  and 
there  is  almost  nothing  that  is  not  possible  to  be  done.  Done,  for 
instance,  for  the  imagination  or  for  the  memory  or  for  the  faculty  of 
abstraction  or  for  the  conscience.  And  not  only  is  it  possible  to  push 
any  single,  selected  faculty — as  imagination,  memory,  abstraction  or 
conscience — on  thus  into  perfection  ;  but  (what  is  much  more 
marvelous),  it  is  possible  to  harness  up  a.  team  of  faculties  and 
diligently  routine  them  together,  even  as  raw  soldiers  are  routined 
together  in  military  drill,  until  said  faculties  are  able  to  move  in 
absolute  co-ordination,  in  absolute  spontaneity  together,  starting  off 
all  of  them  at  the  least  crack  of  the  whip  on  an  automatic  dead-run  ; 
an  unreflective  dead-run,  an  unconscious  dead-run,  a  machine-like 
run,  an  undirected  run,  a  run  of  their  own  motion,  a  run  by  blind 
habit,  a  triumphant  run  too,  such  as  could  never  have  been  approxi- 
mated, save  by  the  calling  in  of  the  automatic  principle. 

Every  thinking  man  can  illustrate  this  from  his  own  history — 
and  I  can — thus  :  When  I  have  gathered  together  a  miscellaneous 
heap  of  memoranda  for  a  sermon,  the  next  step  I  need  to  take  is 
to  organize  that  miscellany  under  some  terms  of  order.  It  will  not 
do  to  tumble  it  out  on  my  congregation  in  its  present  confusion  and 
lack  of  unity,  any  more  than  it  will  do  for  a  painter  to  empty  the 
unassorted  contents  of  his  mind  on  to  his  canvas.  Well,  there  are 
several  possible  principles  of  order  whereby  I  may  reduce  that  heap 
of  valuable  stuff  to  shape  and  make  it  comprehensible ;  some  of 
which  principles  are  superficial  and  scarcely  more  dignified  than  a 
trick,  while  others  are  philosophical,  deep  and  true.  Among  these 
perplexing  possibles  I  must  choose.  I  dare  not  undertake  to  say 
exactly  how  many  of  the  faculties  of  my  head  are  involved  in  this 
business  that  I  am  now  describing.  A  good  many ;  I  am  sure  of 
that.  By  my  perceptives  I  look  at  my  written  memoranda.  By  my 
memory  I  recall  just  what  those  very  abridged  and  imperfect  memo- 
randa stand  for.  By  something-or-other  in  me  I  decide  the  com- 
parative value  of  those  recorded  items  and  the  precise  place  or  rank 
to  which  they  therefore  shall  be  assigned  in  my  discourse.  Undoubt- 
edly that  something  or  other  in  me  is  my  religious  nature,  for  one 


398  YALE   LECTURES. 

thing.  For  instance,  an  item  that  on  inspection  seems  a  little 
irreverent,  my  reverence  rejects.  An  item  not  wholly  harmonious 
with  the  revealed  truth  of  God,  my  reverence  and  my  sanctified 
affection  and  my  truthfulness,  reject.  Perhaps  some  one  of  these 
memoranda  is  full  of  fine  analysis  or  full  of  ideality  and  I  shall  take 
hold  and  deal  with  it  in  the  use  of  certain  corresponding  powers  of 
my  nature.  It  begins  to  look  as  though  all  there  is  of  me  were 
embarked  in  this  enterprise.  I  am  not  marching  into  it  by  any 
single  faculty  or  any  six  faculties,  but  I  am  using  my  entire  team. 
It  is  a  very  complex  case  of  cooperation.  But  I  do  it  easily  enough. 
As  likely  as  not  I  will  have  that  chaos  subdued  in  a  few  minutes.  I 
do  not  go  around  among  my  numerous  faculties  and  exhort  each 
one  to  do  his  very  best  now  and  keep  the  touch  of  the  elbow  with 
his  brother  faculties  and  not  get  into  the  see-saw  of  an  ugly  mule 
team.  When  I  began  to  make  sermons,  I  did  a  good  deal  of  this 
exhorting  and  consumed  much  time  on  it.  My  team  had  never 
been  hitched  up  before — not  much  at  any  rate — certainly  they  had 
not  been  hitched  to  anything  so  big  as  a  sermon.  So  I  had  to 
exhort  them  and  coax  and  flog.  But  I  accepted  myself  as  I  was 
born  and  proceeded  to  practice  coordination.  I  exhorted  the 
faculties.  And  I  whipped  them.  I  did  it  every  week.  Some  weeks 
I  thought  I  had  gained  on  it.  Then  again,  I  thought  I  had  not. 
However,  on  the  whole  I  did  gain.  And  now  when  I  get  my  chaos 
assembled — my  unformulated  materials  of  discourse — all  I  have  to 
do  is  just  what  a  famous  public  singer  told  a  friend  of  mine  she 
does  when  she  is  on  the  stage  and  wants  her  throat  to  trill.  She 
practiced  daily  four  years,  she  said,  and  had  not  even  then  succeeded 
in  reaching  the  trill  she  was  after.  The  physical  organs,  the  organs 
of  articulation  and  her  mind,  in  the  several  faculties  involved,  were 
not  yet  quite  co-efficient  and  simultaneous  in  their  action.  They 
could  not  catch  the  knack  of  hitching  up  together  and  trilling.  But 
at  last,  suddenly,  the  lady  could  not  tell  how,  the  long-sought  hitch- 
up  was  made  and  off  went  the  trill  like  a  bird.  And  ever  since 
that  moment  she  has  had  no  difficulty.  The  inharmonious  powers 
once  harnessed  up,  never  unharnessed.  And  now  whenever  she 
wants  to  perform  that  feat,  she  simply  gives  the  word  to  the  facul- 
ties concerned  and  they  take  care  of  it  all.  She  feels  and  knows 
that  they  do  it  and  not  she.  The  performance  is  taken  right  out  of 
her  hands.  What  was  volitional  for  a  long  time  and  accompanied 
with  a  great  deal  of  pushing,  is  now  involuntary ;  as  involuntary 


YALE   LECTURES.  399 

as  the  tick,  tick,  of  a  wound-up  clock.  So  the  minister  with  the 
stuff  of  a  sermon  on  hand,  which  he  is  going  to  organize.  For 
years  it  went  hard  with  him  to  do  that — rather  hard — but  now  the 
hard  is  easy.  He  can  start  his  trill  with  the  snap  of  his  finger. 
While  he  is  simply  looking  at  that  mass  of  material,  its  atoms  begin 
to  move.  And  they  do  not  move  promiscuously  either.  Evidently 
they  have  been  seized  with  a  common  idea.  It  is  like  the  drum- 
call  in  an  encampment  of  soldiers.  The  soldiers  pour  out  innumer- 
able and  fly  everywhither,  but  behold,  they  fly  into  companies  and 
regiments.  Those  incoherent,  insensate  atoms  (the  minister's  ser- 
mon stuff)  do  the  same  thing.  They  are  not  insensate.  They  have 
caught  the  hint  of  their  master.  It  is  a  case  of  trill.  They  organ- 
ize themselves.  The  minister  does  not  do  it.  At  most,  he  simply 
watches  the  thing  go  on  and  enjoys  it.  It  is  just  like  music,  the 
way  those  atoms  and  crude  masses  make  haste  to  get  themselves 
into  orderliness  and  there  stand  in  beautiful  array. 

I  have  made  too  many  words  on  this  illustration,  but  it  will 
stand  for  a  large  class  of  mental  processes  ;  processes  self-moved, 
processes  wherein  numbers  of  our  mental  powers  (to  say  nothing  of 
our  corporeal  powers) ,  conspire  and  pull  together  and  do  it  spon- 
taneously ;  processes  that  are  never  possible  to  be  arrived  at  except 
in  one  way,  namely  ;  by  long  routine. 

I  beg  you  to  take  good  notice  of  that  last ;  that  certain  mental 
works  never  can  be  done  at  all,  if  routine  is  not  called  in  and 
pushed  and  pushed  till  what  was  difficult  has  become  second  nature. 
All  expert  doings  depend  on  just  that  and  that  is  one  of  the  greatest 
values  of  routine.  I  spoke  of  a  long-practiced  minister's  looking 
his  sermon  stuff  into  shape  in  a  few  moments,  but  that  is  not  the 
only  line  of  work  wherein  his  life-long  routining  tells.  It  tells  in  his 
amplification  of  that  same  discourse.  It  tells  in  the  fairly  bewitched 
way  in  which  the  entire  mixed  contents  of  the  creation,  like  live 
things  flock  to  the  out-looks  of  his  mind  as  he  writes,  begging  to  be 
let  in  for  the  illumination  and  enrichment  of  that  discourse.  He 
does  not  have  to  send  out  a  search  warrant  for  these  things.  Once 
he  did  and  his  search-warrants  could  not  bring  in  more  than  a 
fraction  of  them  either.  But  the  warrants  have  been  flying  about 
and  all  abroad  for  twenty  or  thirty  years  now,  and  the  creation  has 
taken  the  hint  at  last,  so  that  not  a  single  search-warrant  is  any 
longer  necessary.  No  ;  but  as  the  heaped-up,  unarranged  mass  of 
sermon-stock  that  I  mentioned  as  waiting  to  be  organized,  suddenly 


400  YALE   LECTURES. 

developed  a  stir  in  all  its  atoms,  when  the  master's  order-loving  eye 
lighted  thereon,  so  the  innumerable  things  of  the  creation,  so  soon 
as  they  got  wind  of  it  that  the  minister  had  gone  to  his  desk  for 
amplification,  took  up  an  automatic  movement  towards  that  desk 
and  poured  in  a  very  embarrassment  of  riches. 

Or,  take  the  minister  as  publicly  extemporizing,  whether  in 
prayer  or  discourse.  Once  he  always  rose  to  utter  himself  with 
trepidation.  He  was  not  sure  of  his  words  and  he  was  not  sure  of 
his  ideas.  But  now  he  could  go  on  forever.  Sometimes  he  does. 
As  likely  as  not  he  is  eloquent.  He  does  not  try  to  be.  He  passed 
clear  beyond  trying  years  ago  and  now  it  is  a  case  of  trilling.  Or  it 
is  like  those  amazing,  musically-organized  Italians  who  improvise. 
Those  men  versify  and  rhyme  and  sing  and  touch  the  whole  thing  off 
harmoniously  on  their  guitars,  with  the  facility  of  rippling  brooks, 
because  they  have  for  a  long  time  turned  their  whole  peculiar  nature 
— body,  soul  and  spirit — into  a  routine  of  improvisation. 

Of  the  same  sort  precisely,  is  that  unconscious  personal  poise, 
and  unconscious  ease  of  conversation,  repartee,  fence  and  sparkle, 
which  many  a  woman  of  the  world  displays.  Such  a  man  as  Daniel 
Webster  or  John  Foster  and  a  thousand  more  exceedingly  able  men, 
look  upon  her  as  an  almost  supernatural  being ;  she  is  so  frightfully 
superior  to  them  in  all  this  beautiful  airiness ;  whereas  the  truth  is, 
her  life  has  been  spent  in  that  thing  until  she  ripples,  glitters,  tosses 
you  on  the  sharp  end  of  her  bodkin  and  makes  you  to  feel  like  a 
fool,  automatically.  She  can  sparkle  as  easily  as  you  can  prose  on 
the  weather. 

In  all  the  fine  handicrafts,  this  same  principle  comes  in  abun- 
dantly of  course.  Proficiency  in  every  department  of  human  devel- 
opment depends  on  skill  artificially  worked  up — worked  up  by 
routine. 

And  all  these  brilliant  inventions  in  the  practical  field  and  these 
brilliant  discoveries  in  the  field  of  science,  those  of  them  which  are 
reached  by  sudden  intuitive  outsprings  of  the  mind  rather  than  by 
methodical  processes  of  reasoning — and  there  be  many  such — are 
apt  to  be  the  work  of  well-routined  minds ;  solidly  methodized 
minds  ;  minds  that  have  come  to  supreme  facility  by  much  precision 
and  practice,  so  that,  although  seeming  sudden,  they  are  not  mere 
guess-work  and  upstart  movement  but  rather  the  blossoming  of 
a  plant  which  had  in  it  the  manifold  potentialities  of  a  blossom 
after  all. 


YALE   LECTURES.  401 

I  say  then,  one  of  the  uses  of  routine  is  facility.  Work  by 
method  makes  facile  work  at  last,  because  we,  in  mind  and  body 
both,  are  capable  of  automatic  action. 

And  speaking  still  further  on  the  idea  that  he  who  works  by 
method  and  consents  to  routine,  works  easier  and  can  do  more 
work,  I  mention  this. 

That  routine  gradually  stamps  out  reluctance  in  us,  so  that  we 
lie  down  under  it  as  we  do  under  any  other  inevitable  and  waste  no 
time  or  friction  in  halting  and  rebelling.  When  the  chaotic  masses 
of  the  primal  creation  were  first  lumped  into  shapely  globes  and  then 
set  in  the  bondage  of  definite  orbits  and  precise  time-keeping,  day 
and  night  forever,  I  can  imagine  that  they  did  not  enjoy  it  and 
would  have  sulked  and  possibly  did  sulk  in  the  privacy  of  their  own 
minds — but  what  was  the  use — the  course  of  created  things  was 
established  and  started  and  there  they  were  in  the  whirl  of  it.  So 
sulking  died  out,  just  as  a  minister's  groanings  over  his  first  sermons 
died  out,  as  the  routine  that  he  had  chosen  for  life  went  on  and  as 
his  groanings  over  his  first  pastor-work  died  out.  Routine  kills 
groanings  and  the  good  breath  thus  saved  is  turned  into  work.  I 
have  certain  days  in  the  week  when  I  make  parish  calls,  I  will  sup- 
pose ;  a  certain  day  or  days  when  I  attend  to  odds  and  ends ;  cer- 
tain mornings  when  I  write,  certain  hours  when  I  receive  the  human 
family,  certain  hours  when  I  pray,  certain  times  when  I  fast,  certain 
times  when  I  take  exercise,  certain  times  when  I  cast  overboard  all 
work,  empty  myself  of  intentions  and  float  round  in  a  vacuum.  I 
framed  out  my  time  in  this  manner  years  and  years  ago,  I  will  still 
suppose,  and  now  the  question  of  times  and  seasons  never  comes  up. 
Tt  is  fast-time  say.  Well,  if  I  had  not  my  routine  established,  I 
should  beg  off  sometimes.  There  is  nothing  in  fasting  that  is  con- 
genial to  the  bodily  appetites.  Wliat  they  like  is  eating.  And 
where  a  person  is  born  very  fleshly  they  like  eating  first  rate.  So  I 
incline  to  beg-off.  And  I  not  merely  beg  but  I  reason.  An  ingen- 
ious man  can  see  a  good  many  alluring  arguments  for  not  fasting. 
So  I  might  spend  a  week  debating  the  question,  procrastinating, 
shivering  on  the  brink,  wondering  whether  I  had  better  ever  begin. 
So  in  the  matter  of  calls,  I  had  rather  read  my  book.  And  in  the 
matter  of  my  prayer,  my  newspaper  has  just  come  in,  or  my  sensi- 
bilities are  dull,  or  I  am  somehow  in  a  mysterious  inertia.  Now  the 
non-routine  man  fritters  away  half  his  time,  petting  his  own  reluc- 
tancies,  his  indisposition  to  take  up  tasks  and  disagreeable  duties ; 


402  YALE   LECTURES. 

whereas,  if  his  allotment  of  time  from  his  God  were  clearly  pro- 
grammed and  foreordained,  when  this  or  that  duty  arrived  he  would 
move  to  it  with  something  very  like  spontaneity.  Take  it  as  respects 
the  choice  of  topics  for  sermons.  Many  ministers  spend  almost  as 
much  time  hunting  topics,  or  selecting  topics  from  those  which  they 
have  hunted  down,  as  they  do  in  unfolding  the  same ;  and  withal, 
this  hunting  business  is  much  more  vexatious  and  killing  than  un- 
folding is.  Supposing  now  this  topic-hunter  had  a  prearranged 
general  order  of  topics.  Supposing  he  was  a  Christian-year  man. 
Supposing  he  was  a  doctrinal  preacher  and  worked  up  a  course  of 
doctrinal  sermons  once  in  so  long.  Supposing  he  even  took  for  his 
rule  the  tossing  up  of  a  penny  and  letting  heads  or  tails  decide. 
Suppose  almost  anything  in  the  direction  of  method  and  routine. 
Do  you  not  see  that  that  ends  hunting,  in  the  main  ?  When  a  thing 
is  nailed  right  on  to  a  man  by  a  prescribed  order,  he  has  nothing  to 
do  but  take  it  and  make  the  best  of  it  and  spend  not  a  minute  in 
further  search,  or  in  grumbling.  You  might  imagine  that  a  forced 
topic  would  breed  grumbling,  but  it  does  not.  Routine  men  find 
that  it  does  not.  At  Christmas,  Epiphany,  Good-Friday,  Easter, 
Ascension  and  Whit  Sunday — those  Christian-tides,  for  example — 
you  are  looked  to,  I  will  suppose,  for  a  particular  sort  of  sermon 
every  year  so  long  as  you  live.  But  this,  like  any  other  circuit  that 
any  reasonable  man  or  Christian  body  is  likely  to  adopt,  is  full  of  the 
best  kind  of  suggestiveness  to  the  mind  ;  so  that  when  any  given  date 
or  period  arrives,  the  mere  coming  of  it  with  its  cargo  of  meanings 
starts  the  man  into  fertility  straightforth.  Moreover  it  lies  in  the 
nature  of  the  mind,  that  so  soon  as  it  plainly  discerns  the  inevitable 
— especially  if  it  is  a  genial  inevitable — it  acts  like  those  spontane- 
ous atoms  in  the  minister's  pile  of  sermon-material,  when  the  minis- 
ter's awful  eye  rested  upon  them.  They  started  with  alacrity  and 
any  mind  in  its  predetermined  and  unescapable  circuit  of  thought 
always  developes  alacrity  so  that,  verily  that  is  fulfilled  which 
William  Wordsworth  said  in  his  now  famous  address  to  Duty : 

Stern  Lawgiver  !     Yet  thou  dost  wear 
The  Godhead's  most  benignant  grace; 
Nor  know  we  anything  so  fair 
As  is  the  smile  upon  thy  face  : 

Then  Wordsworth  takes  wing  in  a  flight  like  the  following,  still 
apostrophizing  Duty  : — 


YALE   LECTURES.  403 

Flowers  laugh  before  thee  on  their  beds, 

And  fragrance  in  thy  footing  treads ; 

Thou  dost  preserve  the  stars  from  wrong; 

And  the  most  ancient  heavens,  through  Thee  are  fresh  and  strong. 

No  doubt,  each  man  of  us  ought  to  go  to  his  duty  in  each  case 
of  duty  by  the  pull  in  part  at  least  of  great  motives  consciously  in 
him  at  the  moment,  and  if  we  live  long  enough,  and  the  grace  of 
God  to  us-ward  fails  not,  we  shall  eventually  find  ourselves  in  that 
state ;  a  state  so  blessed  that  it  is  hard  to  wait  for  its  coming ;  but  at 
present,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  we  all  have  our  lethargies,  when  the  pull 
in  us  and  on  us  of  motives  is  feeble ;  and  in  these  low  times,  rather 
than  that  we  totally  come  short  and  leave  our  duty  undone,  it  is 
well  if  we  are  started  forth  by  the  simple  nudge  and  joggle  of 
routine  ;  fasting,  for  instance,  because  the  time  for  fasting  has  come, 
calling  on  the  parishioners  because  it  is  the  day  for  it,  praying  be- 
cause it  is  the  hour  for  prayer,  and  not  because  we  so  want  to  do. 
A  debate  might  be  raised  on  the  exact  moral  worth  of  such  perform- 
ances as  those,  either  to  the  performer  or  to  those  performed  upon, 
but  all  debate  is  cut  short  the  moment  it  is  mentioned  that  God 
himself  has  appointed  days,  dates,  hours  and  numerous  circularities 
of  human  action,  knowing,  all  the  while,  that  not  one  man  in  all 
generations  forever  would  come  up  to  those  appointments,  each 
and  all,  and  every  time,  unlanguidly.  He  knew  we  could  not  do  it. 
Nevertheless  he  made  the  appointments.  Therefore  his  mind  must 
be  that  we  take  these  our  necessary,  occasional  torpidities  with  us, 
and  go  in  to  the  duties.  And  if  that  is  his  mind,  then  we  may 
reasonably  look  for  a  blessing,  in  such  unaffirmative,  matter-of- 
course  routine  fidelities.  And  I  think  it  may  be  noticed,  in  human 
life,  that  the  steadfast  time-keepers,  the  men  that  never  ask  permis- 
sion of  their  moods  to  keep  their  engagements  with  God,  and  their 
engagements  with  men  for  God's  sake,  are  blessed.  They  make 
better  characters  than  the  disciples  of  do-as-you-feel.  They  are 
honester.  They  cannot  be  tampered  with.  Put  them  in  an  awful 
gap,  turn  away  your  head  five  minutes,  and  then  look  back ;  they 
are  there  still.  Turn  your  head,  if  you  want  to,  six  months.  Still 
they  are  there.  Cicero's  "abut,  excessit,  evasit,  erupit"  and  the 
rest,  does  not  apply  to  them.  They  have  not  erupit.  They  have 
not  even  abut.  And  they  never  will.  What  can  you  expect  of  a 
man  that  goes  by  his  moods,  never  does  any  thing  that  he  does  not 
want  to,  or,  at  the  best,  procrastinates,  hoping  that  sometime  he  will 


404  YALE  LECTURES. 

want  to.  I  say  unto  you,  such  an  one  has  provided  fundamentally 
for  his  own  ruin,  and  for  his  own  uselessness,  considerably,  among  the 
children  of  men.  The  truth  is,  my  Brother,  by  diligence  you  can 
kill  your  own  moodiness  and  make  yourself  a  steady-going-person. 
You  can  kill  your  moral  moods,  and  you  can  kill  your  intellectual 
moods.  I  marvel  when  I  notice  how  much  more  uniform  the  action 
of  my  own  mind  is  than  it  once  was.  I  can  get  something  out  of 
it  any  day.  I  do  not  say  what,  but  something.  Long  ago,  when  I 
used  to  go  to  my  study  to  think  and  write,  I  could  not  tell  whether 
my  mind  would  give  down  that  day  or  not.  Now  I  know.  I  know 
it  will.  So  far  as  quantity  of  production  is  concerned,  a  stupid 
day  is  about  as  good  as  a  bright  one  with  me.  And  when  a  stupid 
writing-day  happens  along,  I  keep  firmly  to  the  routine  of  produc- 
tion and  put  up  with  some  falling  off  in  the  quality,  for  fear  that  if 
I  ease  off  on  the  routine,  my  once  moody  mind  will  fall  from  the 
grace  of  uniform  productivity  back  into  its  original  state  of  incon- 
stancy, costiveness  and  inability,  and  have  whole  days  of  no  yield 
whatever.     Keep  your  sap  running,  lest  it  forget  how. 

As  I  come  now  to  the  close  of  this  lecture,  I  begin  to  think  of 
my  own  reputation  for  consistency,  for  did  I  not  name  it  as  one  of 
the  evils  of  automatism  on  its  religious  side,  that  it  tends  towards, 
even  if  it  does  not  involve  an  inattentive,  mechanical  and  therefore 
formalistic  style  of  observance  and  duty-doing ;  nevertheless,  have  I 
not  gone  boldly  forward  to  magnify  routine  fidelities  ?  I  have  not 
the  least  doubt  that  I  could  worm  my  way  out  of  that  incongruity  if, 
after  having  spoken  to  you  so  long,  I  might  take  time  to  do  the  nec- 
essary amount  of  squirming.  I  can  recollect  the  time  when  if  I 
seemed  to  contradict  myself,  I  was  frightened ;  but  I  have  got  over 
that.  Now  I  go  straight  on  and  say  what  seems  to  be  true  as 
regards  my  subject,  and  take  it  for  granted  that  all  those  sayings 
will  fight  it  out  among  themselves  and  get  a  real  concord  and 
peace. 

The  problem  to-day  is  to  accept  routine  and  even  automatisms 
with  their  unquestionable  advantages,  and  yet  not  take  on  any  of 
their  disadvantages.  A  very  critical  piece  of  navigation.  But, 
Beloved,  that  is  about  where  we  mortals  are  in  most  things.  It  is 
like  paddling  a  birch  canoe.  You  must  sit  in  the  middle,  sit  per- 
pendicular, not  turn  your  head  much  either  way,  and  part  your  hah 
in  the  middle  (as  some  one  has  said),  else  you  upset.  Well,  there 
is  where  we  get  discipline.     In  this  life  of  ours,  with  its  many  forms 


YALE  LECTURES.  405 

and  instances  of  difficult  navigation,  we  are  to  consider,  to  balance 
things,  to  watch  ourselves,  to  secure  preponderations  often  by  the 
weight  of  a  single  hair,  to  run  the  gauntlet  of  many  dangers  and 
not  be  caught  by  any  of  them.  That  is  what  we  are  in  the  world 
for  and  out  of  it  comes  character. 

A  large  amount  of  our  activity,  and  a  considerable  part  of  our 
responsible  action  needs  to  be  relegated  to  our  automatic  powers. 
After  that  is  done  there  is  no  danger  that  there  will  not  be  hundreds 
of  things  left  to  be  attended  to  volitionally  and  in  full  consciousness 
of  what  we  are  about.  Take  our  constant  walking  as  an  illustration. 
We  simply  cannot  give  to  it  our  voluntary  attention.  There  is  too 
much  else  to  busy  ourselves  about.  It  must  go  on  mechanically. 
Take  the  operations  of  an  accountant.  He  adds  up  his  long 
columns  of  figures  and  runs  through  his  long  processes  with  spon- 
taneous inattention  ;  and  his  business  would  kill  him  if  it  was  not  so. 
Take  these  mechanics  who  stand  at  a  bench  and  do  some  one 
small  thing  over  and  over  forever.  We  call  them  "skilled  work- 
men," and  pay  them  high  wages,  but  this  skill  of  theirs  that  we  are 
willing  to  pay  so  much  for,  is  simply  the  more  or  less  automatic 
facility  into  which  they  have  perseveringly  routined  themselves. 
But  their  craft  still  requires  from  them  a  great  deal  of  determined 
conscious  attention,  and  by  as  much  as  their  faculties  operate  auto- 
matically, by  so  much  are  their  minds  released  and  at  liberty  to  give 
themselves  to  this  conscious  and  considerate  attention,  and  thus 
reach  on  towards  perfection  in  their  craft. 

So  in  the  domain  of  morals  and  religion.  In  so  far  as  our 
numerous  fidelities  to  man  and  God  have  come  one  after  the  other 
by  long  practice  to  be  what  you  may  call  automatised,  we  are  set 
free  for  the  labors  of  intentional  and  effort-full  action.  By  the  grace 
of  God  our  expectation  is  that  some  day  our  total  action  will  be  to 
a  good  degree  automatised.  At  all  events  it  will  be  spontaneous. 
It  will  come  from  us  with  ease  and  satisfaction.  We  believe  this, 
because  it  has  been  promised.  We  believe  it  too  because  already, 
at  particular  times,  under  special  inspirations  of  the  Holy  Ghost,  the 
whole  team  of  our  lumbering  and  reluctant  powers  and  energies 
have  swung  into  a  blithesome  flight,  a  beautiful  fury,  a  complete 
liberation,  a  something  unvolitional  and  lyrical  to  the  last  degree. 
That  is  the  ideal  condition  of  man ;  and  this  automatism  that  I 
have  said  so  much  about,  with  its  perils  and  its  many  values,  is  the 
foreshadow  and  similitude  of  that.     And  it  is  a  precious  thing  that 


406  YALE  LECTURES. 

even  in  the  natural  action  of  our  natural  powers,  and  so  low  down 
as  these  half-wrecked,  corruptible  bodies  of  ours,  this  automatic 
similitude  and  prophecy  doth  develop  itself  in  never-so-many  forms. 


ADDRESSES. 


HENRY  WILSON  * 


Delivered  at  the  Park  Church,  Hartford,  Jan.  13,  1878. 


How  far  it  is  grateful  to  the  departed  when  we  who  remain 
remember  them,  and  speak  forth  their  names  and  their  worth,  I  will 
not  undertake  now  to  determine ;  but  this  one  thing  is  plain,  that 
these  rememberings  are  of  great  benefit  to  us,  as  they  certainly  are 
most  congenial  to  our  natural  feeling.  They  serve  to  bring  down 
into  this  unrestful  life  of  ours  the  peace  of  that  still  country  into 
which  our  beloved  are  withdrawn.  They  make  that  country,  so 
remote  from  the  ordinary  thought  of  man,  to  be  very  near  and  very 
real ;  and  they  give  us  such  a  clear  and  strong  sense  of  it,  that  when 
at  last  we  ourselves  shall  go  out  into  it,  we  shall  feel  that  we  are 
entering  a  well-known  and  home-like  land.  Yes,  I  do  not  doubt 
that  there  are  here  present  to-day  many  who,  by  virtue  of  much 
recollection  of  dear  ones  gone,  and  much  dwelling  upon  the  serene 
estate  into  which  they  have  ascended,  are  in  actual  present  posses- 
sion of  that  hereafter  as  truly  as  they  are  in  possession,  by  the  senses, 
of  this  world  which  they  now  inhabit.  And  this  calling  to  mind  of 
those  lost  to  us  does  also  mightily  quicken  our  sense  of  the  redemp- 
tion through  Jesus  Christ.  We  think  of  what  that  redemption  has 
already  done  for  them,  and  that  it  is  solemnly  pledged,  in  some 
future  glorious  day,  to  restore  even  their  bodies,  fashioning  them 
into  the  likeness  of  Christ's  own  risen  and  immortal  body.  And  as 
we  ponder  these  things,  and  (as  is  natural)  widen  our  thought  to 
include  the  many  millions  besides  our  own  dead,  who  have  entered 
into  the  same  redemption  and  the  same  resplendent  hope,  that 
redemption,  I  say,  grows  to  be  a  most  radiant  and  immeasurable 

*Composer  of  church  music.     Organist  of  Christ   Church,   Hartford,   1855-1877,  and   01' 
Park  Church,  1877-1878. 
27 


410  HENRY  WILSON. 

thing  before  our  eyes,  and  we  long  with  a  great  longing  to  be  our- 
selves entered  into  the  fullness  of  it.  Also,  when  we  recount  those 
unseen  redeemed  millions  of  our  God,  we  are  made  strong  for  the 
appointed  conflicts  of  life,  and  when  we  see  this  or  that  good  cause 
in  a  small  minority  here  on  earth,  and  suffering  defeat,  our  souls 
easily  take  an  appeal  from  these  overriding  earthly  majorities  to 
yonder  spiritual  hosts,  even  to  that  "great  cloud  of  witnesses"  to 
which  the  sacred  writer  refers,  and  to  which  the  hard-pressed  chil- 
dren of  God  in  that  early  day,  I  have  no  doubt,  did  continually 
appeal. 

So,  on  all  accounts,  let  us  never  forget  those  who  have  left  us. 
Let  us  recall  their  names  in  the  household,  in  the  sanctuary,  in  the 
daily  way  of  life.  Let  us  lay  them  down  to  their  rest  amid  the 
sweetest  scenes  of  nature,  and  in  fields  made  beautiful  by  reverent 
art.  Let  us  fill  the  air  over  them  with  the  words  of  the  great  Chris- 
tian assurances  and  thanksgivings  and  benedictions.  And,  year  by 
year,  at  suitable  times  and  in  suitable  ways,  let  us  turn  to  them  in 
especial  recollection — not  in  melancholy,  but  in  tenderness  and  in 
the  joy  of  the  sons  of  God.  All  of  which,  I  say,  in  a  general  way, 
but  oh,  with  what  particularity  it  applies  to  this  dear  man,  so  much 
in  the  thoughts  of  us  all  this  day  ! 

Permit  me,  for  a  few  moments  now,  to  confine  your  attention 
to  him,  and  name  before  you  certain  considerations  in  respect  to  him, 
which  are  fitted  to  bring  satisfaction  rather  than  depression  to  our 
troubled  hearts. 

First,  if  we  recall  what  he  personally  was,  surely  we  cannot  be 
otherwise  than  gladdened.  My  own  intimate  acquaintance  with  him 
began  in  1861,  sixteen  years  ago,  and  from  that  time  to  this  I  have 
known  him  like  a  brother,  and  in  a  way  of  love  so  deep  and  fond, 
that  the  removal  of  no  acquaintance  has  ever  touched  me  just  like 
this  removal.  And  I  do  not  seem  to  be  alone  in  this.  The  men 
and  the  women  whom  I  have  seen  weeping  since  last  Tuesday  assure 
me  that  I  have  not  misestimated  this  man. 

To  name  the  greatest  thing  first,  his  integrity  was  absolute,  and 
his  purity  of  mind  without  a  stain.  Into  whatever  field  his  uncom- 
mon wit  led  him,  he  maintained  his  soul's  whiteness,  and  into  what- 
ever company  he  might  be  thrown,  you  could  be  perfectly  sure  that 
he  would  retain  there  his  sweet  spotlessness. 

Next,  he  was  a  loving  man.  This  was  shown  in  the  beautiful 
harmlessness,  always,  of  his  wit.     In  fact,  it  was  not  exactly  wit  that 


HENRY  WILSON.  411 

so  characterized  him,  but  humor  rather — that  laughter-provoking 
play  of  the  mind  which  is  suffused  with  kindly  feeling,  and  has  its 
main  distinction  in  that.  Countless  times  I  have  known  him  to 
make  personal  hits  that  were  irresistible  and  could  never  be  forgot- 
ten by  the  victim  of  them,  but  I  never  knew  a  person  to  feel  himself 
wounded  by  these  thrusts.  There  was  too  much  love  in  him  for 
that.  And  this  loving  nature  of  his  it  was,  this  loving  nature  joined 
with  great  sprightliness  of  mind  and  rare  intellectual  gifts  in  several 
directions,  which  made  him  so  much  a  favorite  in  general  society, 
so  that  hardly  any  one  in  this  community  could  be  more  missed  in 
this  regard  than  he  will  be.  Missed  by  his  pupils ;  missed  by  his 
musical  acquaintances ;  missed  in  the  households  where  he  was  a 
frequent  visitor ;  missed  in  the  happy  social  assemblies  which  he 
enlivened  ;  missed  in  the  mourning  minds  of  those  chosen  ones  to 
whom  he  gave  himself  in  ties  of  special  confidence  and  communion. 
I  am  grateful  now  that  last  summer,  in  the  days  of  vacation  at  the 
seaside,  he  and  I  spent  several  continuous  weeks  together  in  con- 
stant converse,  and  that  all  my  most  admiring  and  affectionate 
thoughts  concerning  him  received  a  new  confirmation  in  that  pro- 
tracted and  close  intercourse.  He  then  and  there  put  his  final  and 
deepest  stamp  upon  me,  and  I  shall  remember  him  as  he  there 
manifested  his  characteristic  qualities,  in  a  manner  to  make  it 
impossible,  I  fear,  that  I  should  ever  visit  that  summer  resort  for 
any  stay  again.  I  prefer  to  leave  that  place  associated  forever  in 
my  mind  with  him,  without  any  intermingling  of  new  experiences 
and  associations. 

And  here  let  me  say  that  I  feel  as  though  I  had  myself  received 
a  personal  and  especial  favor  in  those  many  and  most  moving  testi- 
monies and  attentions  accorded  to  Mr.  Wilson  in  the  last  days  of  his 
life,  and  in  those  bountiful  and  loving  outpourings  which  have  been 
paid  to  his  memory  since  he  died.  To  those  attached  friends  who 
stood  by  day  and  night  during  those  long  hours  of  uncertainty  and 
sickness,  to  the  hundreds  who  called  inquiringly  at  his  door,  to  the 
gentlemen  who  forsook  their  own  affairs  that  they  might  give  their 
time  to  him,  to  those  many  who  lent  their  aid  to  make  the  day 
wherein  we  bore  him  away  to  his  rest  like  the  movement  of  a  full- 
toned  tender  hymn  by  reason  of  the  flowers  and  the  attending  multi- 
tudes and  the  music  and  the  divine  services  that  filled  it ;  to  those 
friends  of  long  standing  and  often  tested  who  insisted  that  his  form 
should  be  laid  right  among  the  burial-places  of  their  own  households, 


412  HENRY   WILSON. 

so  that  now  we  are  permitted  to  think  of  him  as  asleep  on  that  noble 
overlooking  height  in  our  noblest  gathering-place  of  the  dead,  where 
all  those  who  loved  him  best  would  have  chosen  he  should  lie ;  and 
finally,  to  that  large  company  who  have  pressed  close  about  her  who 
is  now  left  so  lonely,  giving  to  her  their  tears  and  their  supporting 
strength,  while  they  continually  invoked  upon  her  the  blessing  of 
Him  who  has  promised  to  be  the  widow's  God, — to  these  all,  my 
heart  would  prompt  me  to  return  thanks,  even  as  though  they  had 
done  it  unto  me.  And  as  all  these  things  went  on,  and  especially 
while  we  were  returning  to  our  homes  that  burial  day,  it  incessantly 
occurred  to  me,  Oh,  that  I  could  certainly  know  that  our  dear  Wil- 
son himself  was  understanding  what  a  sincere  and  immense  tribute 
we,  his  own,  were  paying  unto  him,  and  with  what  fullness  and 
unanimity  we  were  certifying  to  our  sense  of  his  life  of  service  on 
earth  ! 

And  at  this  point  I  would  dwell  a  moment  on  his  worth  to  the 
world  in  that  department  of  noble  art  to  which  he  devoted  his  life. 
It  is  meet,  I  think,  that  I  should  mention  this  thing,  and  lift  up  a 
note  of  thanksgiving  for  what  he  was  able  to  accomplish,  especially 
as  we  are  gathered  together  in  the  sanctuary  where  he  officiated 
during  his  last  months  in  this  world,  and  where  the  sounds  of  his 
organ  have  scarcely  yet  died  away.  On  this  subject  I  am  neither 
able  nor  willing  to  speak  with  the  careful  exactness  and  the  judicial 
coolness  of  a  musical  critic.  The  tones  of  his  music  haunt  me  too 
much  just  now  for  that.  This  last  week  the  king  of  Italy  died,  and 
his  son  and  successor,  on  taking  the  throne  and  issuing  a  proclama- 
tion to  the  people,  says,  referring  to  his  departed  father :  "  His 
voice  will  always  resound  in  my  heart."  And  so  say  I  in  regard  to 
this  king  in  another  field,  "  His  voice  will  always  resound  in  my 
heart."  Wonderful  indeed  were  the  uplifts  and  the  soothings  and 
the  divine  illuminations  which' he  has  ministered  unto  many  of  us. 
In  our  moments  of  weakness,  in  our  times  of  heart-sinking,  on 
occasions  when  the  love  of  God  to  us  in  Christ  Jesus  has  not  been 
clear  to  our  confused  and  cloudy  minds,  in  our  weariness  with  this 
present  world,  in  our  manifold  dead-heartedness  and  doom,  and  in 
our  mighty  bereavements,  what  has  not  Henry  Wilson  done  for  us  ! 
No  language  can  tell  it.  A  great  leader  and  composer  of  church 
music  stands  and  serves  in  a  most  divine  and  most  touching  office. 
I  wish  those  faithful  men  could  know  how  they  bless  us,  and  what 
love  we  bear  them.     The  cold-hearted  and  the  critical  may  say  what 


HENRY  WILSON.  413 

they  please  about  them,  but  we,  the  myriads  and  millions  to  whom 
they  have  opened  heavenly  riches,  and  whom  they  have  oft  times 
carried  clean  and  clear  above  this  miserable  world,  will  encircle  them 
with  our  acclamations  while  they  live,  and  strew  their  graves  with 
benedictions  when  they  are  dead.  No  form  of  human  expression 
approximates  the  form  musical.  The  spoken  words  of  the  preacher 
are  to  me  a  mere  dullness  in  comparison  with  it.  The  victories  of 
the  canvas  or  of  the  sculptor  are  feeble  by  the  side  of  it.  In 
copiousness  and  versatility,  in  limbemess,  in  refinement,  in  its  easy 
playings  off  into  the  infinite,  and  in  its  triumphant  utterance  of  the 
unutterable  things  of  the  human  heart,  yea,  in  many  things,  music  is 
the  language  of  all  languages  ;  and  when  the  Holy  Scriptures  would 
most  set  forth  the  experiences  of  the  better  world,  they  formulate 
them  in  terms  musical,  and  represent  the  life  there  as  an  utterly 
songful  thing — the  redeemed  are  organized  in  immense  choirs,  and 
they  carry  harps,  and  there  are  tuneful  shoutings  like  the  voice  of 
"many  waters,  and  as  the  voice  of  a  great  thunder,"  and  all  ages 
and  all  generations  take  their  several  parts  in  that  immense  choired 
movement.  And  as  often  as  I  think  of  this  our  dear  friend,  it  best 
suits  me  to  think  of  him  as  now  exalted  into  that  celestial  move- 
ment ;  that  finely  trained  and  most  sensitive  musical  perception  of 
his  being  now  and  at  last  satisfied,  perfectly  satisfied,  and  all  his 
exquisite  development  while  here  being  turned  in  now  to  enhance 
his  gladness  and  augment  his  service  of  his  God  there. 

I  need  not  say  to  this  assembly  how  widely  celebrated  the  choir 
of  Christ  Church,  under  the  leadership  of  Mr.  Wilson,  had  come  to 
be.  Neither  need  I  speak  to  the  professional  musicians  here  pres- 
ent of  the  worth  of  his  original  compositions.  We  rejoice  in  his 
genius.  We  rejoice  in  his  sturdy  faithfulness  to  his  conception  of 
what  church  music  should  be.  We  bless  him  for  certain  special 
compositions  of  his  which  we  have  heard  over  and  over,  and  which 
to  us  are  as  unforgetable  as  our  own  names.  We  shall  remember  this 
and  that  great  day  of  the  Christian  year,  when  we  of  other  com- 
munions gathered  in  Christ  Church  in  crowds,  to  hear  his  organ  and 
his  choir  fill  out  our  best  idea  of  what  the  day  should  be,  and  how 
it  should  be  kept  by  the  assembled  church.  Ah,  yes  !  for  many  a 
year  that  hand  of  his  will  play  upon  our  heart-strings  as  in  the  days 
now  gone,  and  keep  us  longing  for  a  meeting  with  him  again  in  the 
better  world. 

I  spoke  of  Mr.   Wilson's  exquisite  musical  developments  as 


414  HENRY   WILSON. 

coloring  his  life  in  that  world.  Precisely  in  what  ways  the  present 
training  of  our  faculties  in  this  or  that  chosen  vocation  will  go  to 
modify  our  experiences  yonder  and  stamp  its  features  on  our 
appointed  angel  life,  we  in  our  dimness  and  slow  sight  are  not  able 
to  say ;  but  does  any  one  doubt  that  our  life  on  earth  is  in  fact  a 
carefully  chosen  apprenticeship  for  that  life  ?  Is  it  to  be  believed 
that  a  fine-grained  and  powerful  musician,  at  the  very  head  of  the 
world's  art  in  that  line,  like  Beethoven,  he  on  one  hand,  and  on  the 
other  a  redoubtable  strategist,  or  a  sailor,  or  a  converted  Indian,  will 
go  into  and  have  precisely  the  same  heaven,  all  differences  of  devel- 
opment here  going  for  just  nothing,  these  beautiful  earthly  individu- 
alities being  abolished  and  heaven  amounting  to  nothing  more  than 
an  infinite  aggregation  of  stupid  uniformities  ?  Does  God  show  his 
great  love  of  personal  diversity  by  ordering  one  life  thus  and  another 
life  so,  and  then  after  death  make  a  short  turn,  deny  his  own  self, 
and  ordain  an  eternal  dead  level  of  being,  as  though  he  best  liked 
that?  No,  it  is  not  possible.  As  one  star  differs  from  another  star 
in  glory,  so  also  is  it  as  to  the  life  everlasting— not  only  in  respect 
of  moral  diversities  in  God's  gathered  people,  but  as  to  differences 
intellectual  and  affectional,  too,  so  that  a  Wilson  will  remain  Wil- 
son to  all  ages,  and  we  his  old  companions  and  intimates  will  detect 
his  well-known  mind-play  when  we  meet  him,  and  can  have  it  for 
one  of  our  distinct  hopes  that  we  shall  thus  resume  the  intercourse 
which  was  so  precious  to  us  here.  And  if  it  be  so  that  the  absolutely 
unique  individuality  of  every  living  man  shall  be  perpetuated  for- 
ever, and  that  our  particular  drill  in  this  world  will  prove  formative 
of  our  personal  experience  and  service  in  that  other,  then  how 
pleasant  it  is  to  think  of  that  special  career  which  must  be  assigned 
to  our  friend  by  virtue  of  his  musical  discipline  in  these  days  and 
years  below.  It  is  hard  to  believe  that  the  Scriptural  way  of  setting 
forth  heaven  as  a  musically  organized  estate  has  not  some  literalness 
in  it ;  and  if  it  has  not,  nevertheless  that  imagery  must  be  good  and 
sufficiently  exact  for  representing  the  real  lot  and  occupation  of  this 
friend  for  whom  we  mourn.  All  organs  upon  which  he  ever  laid  his 
hands  here,  failed  more  or  less  to  voice  his  soul's  highest  and  most 
lyrical  feeling — all  human  voices  ever  under  his  training  were  but 
partially  broken  vehicles  of  expression  for  his  most  acute  and  exact- 
ing conception  ;  though  sometimes  let  me  say,  his  soul  melted  within 
him  at  what  the  human  voice  could  do,  and  it  was  a  touching  fact 
that  during  his  last  illness  he  was  overheard  murmuring  and  saying : 


HENRY  WILSON.  415 

" '  How  lovely  are  the  messengers  that  bring  us  the  gospel  of  peace  ;' 
did  not  she  sing  that  beautifully?"  He  having  in  mind  a  dear 
member  of  his  choir.  And  if  I  should  repeat  to  the  different  mem- 
bers of  this  same  choir  the  cordial  words  I  myself,  in  our  frequent, 
intimate  conversations  have  heard  him  speak  concerning  them,  it 
would  do  their  hearts  good  I  know.  Yes,  he  has  often  said  to  me 
that  he  could  not  keep  back  his  tears  as  he  sat  at  yonder  organ  and 
listened  to  this  or  that  exquisite  effect  of  the  voices  at  his  side,  tears 
of  simple  delight  sometimes,  and  then  again  tears  of  irresistible  feel- 
ing at  the  sacred  and  tender  thoughts  so  perfectly  rendered.  Still, 
as  I  said,  he  had  in  his  spirit  musical  movements,  which  absolutely 
could  not  be  stated  by  any  earthly  instrument,  or  in  any  known 
terms — dim  movements  not  yet  fully  formulated  even  in  his  own 
mind,  prophetic  flutterings  as  of  unborn  possibilities,  such  as  all  the 
sons  of  genius  in  all  fields  know,  the  obscure  Teachings  out  of  the 
infinite  soul  within  us  seeking  scope  and  the  full-born  life  of  eternity. 
And  I  repeat,  it  gladdens  me  to  think  into  what  musical  and  other 
realizations  and  fulfillments  he  has  now  entered,  and  how  his  striv- 
ings and  rehearsings,  and  thirty  or  more  years  of  faithful  work,  will 
tone  his  heaven  and  will  make  it  sure  that  God,  who  has  a  charac- 
teristic place  for  every  one,  will  give  this  man  his  own  place,  and 
cause  his  ever-unfolding  life  and  duty  there  to  correspond  and  be  a 
continuation,  to  his  peculiar  pupilage  and  culture  here,  so  that  in 
some  future,  God  willing,  we  who  have  admired  him  and  been 
assisted  by  him  so  much,  will  gather  about  him  again  something 
after  the  old  sort,  and  under  the  sweet  constraint  of  the  old  spell, 
the  old  spell  made  perfect  in  the  perfectness. of  Heaven. 

Referring  a  moment  more  to  Mr.  Wilson,  as  he  now  is,  let  me 
remind  you  how  blessed  it  is  for  him  that  he  has  been  permitted  to 
go.  You  all  know  how  sensitively  organized  he  was,  and  how  much, 
therefore,  (like  all  finely  impressible  persons)  he  was  compelled  to 
suffer.  He  would  not  have  been  just  the  artist  which  he  was,  except 
for  that  keen  sensitivity  of  his.  It  was  both  beautiful  and  sad  to  see 
how  a  false  note  would  torture  him,  and  how  the  nearer  he  came  to 
his  musical  ideal,  the  more  tormented  he  was  if  he  could  not  abso- 
lutely reach  it.  His  whole  form  would  sometimes  writhe  under  the 
distress  of  it.  And  in  fact  all  things  struck  him  keenly.  He  was 
sheltered  in  a  home  and  cared  for  by  a  love,  such  as  many  men  do 
not  know ; — and  his  pathway  was  diligently  smoothed  for  him,  and 
all  rude  winds  were  warded  off  by  one  whose  daily  joy,  yes,  whose 


416  HENRY  WILSON. 

very  life,  was  in  his  faithful  love ;  but  this  earth  is  not  the  very  best 
place  for  such  as  he,  and  may  we  not  bless  God  that  he  is  now  tran- 
quilized  in  the  deep-flowing,  calm  life  of  the  eternal ;  the  most 
joyful  joys  he  knew  here  being  exceeded  seven-fold  by  his  experi- 
ences there ;  the  home  love  in  which  he  delighted  here,  being  but  a 
faint  human  image  of  the  love  divine  which  has  now  received  him. 
For  although  our  friend  was  not  a  demonstratively  religious  man, 
and  under  the  stress  of  his  disease  could  not  leave  us  any  last  bright 
words  of  Christian  testimony,  but  only  a  single  sudden  ejaculated 
good-bye  to  his  dearest  standing  around,  nevertheless  we  all  knew 
where  his  heart  was,  and  for  long  years  had  been  ;  and  he  had  pub- 
licly signified  the  same  as  a  communicant  in  Christ  Church,  so  that 
now  we  think  of  him  as  gone  to  be  forever  with  the  Lord. 

Those  who  were  present  in  the  Park  Church  Sunday  before  last 
— his  last  Sunday  of  service — will  remember  with  what  felicity  and 
force  and  true  feeling  he  went  through  our  beautiful  commemoration 
of  the  departed.  It  seemed  to  me  nothing  could  be  more  satisfac- 
tory than  his  work  was  that  day.  And  now  to  my  mind,  and  to  the 
minds  of  many,  that  whole  blessed  morning,  and  all  the  words  of  it, 
are  eternally  associated  with  his  name.  So  often  as  the  last  Sunday 
in  each  year  comes  around  I  shall  recall  him,  and  silently  in  my 
deep  heart  I  shall  say — as  he  then  sung  : — 

Sleep  thy  last  sleep, 

Free  from  care  and  sorrow; 
Rest  where  none  weep, 

'Till  the  eternal  morrow. 
Though  we  may  mourn, 

Those  in  life  the  dearest, 
They  shall  return, 

Christ,  when  Thou  appearest. 
Soon  shall  thy  voice 

Comfort  those  now  weeping, 
Bidding  rejoice, 

All  in  Jesus  sleeping. 


HORACE  BUSHNELL. 


Delivered  on  the  Occasion  of  the  Unveiling  of  a  Bushnell 

Memorial  Tablet  in  the  Park  Church,  Hartford, 

November  24,  1S78. 


Some  months  ago  it  entered  into  the  heart  of  a  certain  gentle- 
man in  our  congregation  (whose  name  I  would  mention  if  I  dared, 
for  we  feel  that  we  are  greatly  indebted  to  him)  that  it  would  be  a 
fitting  and  useful  thing  to  place  upon  the  wall  of  this  edifice  some 
memorial  of  Horace  Bushnell.  On  speaking  to  others  touching  his 
thought,  he  found  them  to  be  of  the  same  mind,  and  thus  encour- 
aged, he  started  out  with  his  customary  energy  to  make  his  thought 
a  fact.  It  did  not  seem  best  to  make  a  general  appeal  on  the 
subject  to  the  numerous  friends  and  admirers  of  Dr.  Bushnell,  nor 
even  to  mention  it  to  the  mass  of  this  congregation.  Had  all  been 
informed  who  would  have  been  glad  to  contribute  to  this  work,  I  do 
not  know  what  we  might  not  have  built  to  the  name  of  this  great 
man.  I  am  informed  by  the  gentleman  referred  to,  who  has  con- 
ferred with  the  donors  and  received  their  gifts,  that  the  cheerful 
and  prompt  sympathy  with  which  he  was  met  as  he  went  among 
them  will  always  be  one  of  the  pleasant  recollections  of  his  life. 
Some  of  them  are  men  and  some  are  women ;  some  young  and 
some  old ;  some  in  deep  accord  with  the  well-known  theological 
views  of  Dr.  Bushnell  and  some  in  open  dissent  therefrom  ;  some 
constrained  to  take  hold  of  this  movement  by  the  promptings  of 
their  own  grateful  feelings,  while  others,  in  addition  to  that  and 
quite  as  much,  were  constrained  by  the  memory  of  their  departed 
parents,  who  were  admiring  and  attached  parishioners  of  Dr. 
Bushnell  long  years  ago.  They  make  up  a  various  company,  but 
they  all  are  heart  to  heart  in  this  testimonial. 


418  HORACE   BUSHNELL. 

What  that  testimonial  itself  is,  and  with  what  success  it  has 
been  labored  upon,  you  will  see  for  yourselves  in  a  few  moments. 
We  hope  it  will  be  satisfactory  to  you,  and  especially  that  the 
portrait  will  commend  itself  to  your  judgment  and  your  recollection 
of  what  Dr.  Bushnell  was.  It  may  be  proper  to  state  that  that  por- 
trait is  the  gift  of  one  family  among  us,  and  that  in  it  are  represented 
many  tender  and  imperishable  memories.  In  it  no  attempt  has 
been  made  to  set  forth  Dr.  Bushnell's  face  as  it  appeared  in  his  ad- 
vanced age,  but  rather,  while  filling  it  as  far  as  possible  with  marks 
of  his  life-long  character,  to  recall  the  days  of  his  unabated  vigor — 
a  most  difficult  thing  to  do  you  will  see  in  a  moment — and  one  in 
which  we  can  least  look  for  the  unanimous  approval  of  the  people ; 
and  yet  it  has  so  far  secured  the  assent  of  the  few  who  have  seen  it 
as  to  make  us  hope  for  a  large  verdict  in  its  favor  when  it  shall  have 
been  generally  examined. 

This  memorial  stone,  then,  is  the  gift  of  a  few  persons — part  of 
whom  are  of  this  congregation,  and  part  outside  of  it — and  their 
request  that  this  church  and  society  would  receive  it  into  their 
custody,  place  it  upon  the  wall  of  their  edifice,  and  engage  that 
it  should  be  sacredly  preserved  forevermore,  has  been  responded  to 
by  both  bodies  in  the  cordial  and  unanimous  action  of  their  several 
committees — which  action,  I  here  and  now  formally  and  publicly 
affirm  and  announce,  thanking  God  that  he  has  moved  these 
donors  to  this  deed,  and  invoking  on  their  heads  his  blessing. 

And  now  let  me  say  I  am  glad  this  memorial  has  been  reared. 

Dr.  Bushnell  was  always  a  particularly  dear  man  to  me. 
Long  before  I  knew  him  personally  I  had  read  his  books  and  felt 
the  impulse  of  his  most  quickening  mind.  I  did  not  at  that  time 
know  a  great  deal  about  theology,  and  could  not  venture  to  say 
whether  he  was  right  or  wrong  in  his  much  debated  views.  Neither 
did  I  profoundly  care,  but  I  was  able  to  see  that  God  had  given 
him  a  most  rare  intellect,  and  that,  in  one  way  or  another,  he 
had  come  to  such  an  ability  to  express  himself  and  impress  himself 
upon  the  receptive,  as  is  not  reached  by  one  in  millions.  By  those 
matured  and  disciplined  men  who  have  already  established  their 
opinions  and  formed  their  style,  the  movement  of  Dr.  Bushnell's 
mind,  and  his  unique  diction,  may  be  less  readily  received,  but  to 
young  men  unformed  and  limber,  his  way  of  stating  himself,  may 
easily  be  most  fascinating.  So  I  found  it,  and  I  was  in  some  sort  a 
disciple  of  his,  and  an  enthusiast  in  his  behalf  (an  intellectual 


HORACE   BUSHNELL.  419 

enthusiast)  at  the  very  first  of  my  reading  him.  And  in  my  literary 
tasks  in  college  when  my  mind  was  jaded,  and  invention,  for  the 
moment,  had  died  out  in  me,  over  and  over  I  renewed  my  poor 
energies  by  contact  with  his  genius,  as  I  read  page  after  page  of  his 
writings.  I  never  saw  him  though,  till  I  heard  him  preach,  one 
Sunday  evening,  in  the  Center  church  of  New  Haven,  I  at  that  time 
being  a  student  in  the  Divinity  School  there.  I  remember  him 
better  than  I  do  his  sermon,  because,  although  I  supposed  my 
mind  to  be  already  pretty  well  adjusted  to  his,  yet  it  was  not  so  far 
adjusted  as  to  make  it  possible  for  me  to  receive  the  full  impression 
of  his  discourse.  Twice  afterwards  I  chanced  to  hear  him  with 
much  the  same  result,  but  in  1857  I  came  to  Hartford  and  took  up 
a  pastorate  right  alongside  of  him,  and,  by  frequent  intercourse, 
began  to  enter  myself  into  the  play  of  his  mind ;  and  for  nineteen 
years,  day  in  and  day  out,  I  observed  him  and  heard  him  talk,  and 
heard  him  in  public  address,  and  watched  him  in  all  the  to-and-fro 
of  his  private  and  public  life— and  I  am  bound  to  say  that  my  early 
conception  of  him  and  his  power  was  only  made  greater  by  all  this, 
until  now  my  fully  ripened  and  final  opinion  in  regard  to  him  is 
what  my  early  admiration  declared,  that  no  thinker  was  ever  more 
magnetic,  and  no  rhetorician  ever  had  a  more  supreme  command 
of  our  English  tongue.  To  the  very  last  of  his  life  his  mental 
affluence  and  his  masterly  expression  were  an  incessant  wonder 
to  me. 

As  I  came  to  do  some  thinking  on  those  themes  where 
he  has  most  attracted  the  attention  of  his  fellow  men,  I  was  con- 
scious of  some  divergence  from  his  views,  and  my  most  remember- 
able  Christian  experiences  have  been  founded  on  conceptions  of 
Christ  and  his  work  which  he  energetically  discarded.  And  in 
view  of  that,  it  seems  as  though  it  ought  to  have  been  a  trial  to  him 
when  I  came  to  be  the  minister  of  his  church.  He  knew  that 
certain  doctrines  of  his,  on  which  he  had  labored  as  for  his  life, 
would  be  every  now  and  then  denied  by  me,  directly  or  indirectly, 
and  that  they  would  be  denied  with  a  constitutional  positiveness 
about  equal  to  his  own,  and  I  shall  always  remember,  with  both 
amusement  and  admiration,  the  characteristic  and  hearty  bluntness 
with  which  he  spoke  out  before  the  council  which  had  just  finished 
its  examination  of  me  in  the  chapel  of  this  church,  and  said  to 
me,  "You'd  better  have  said  nothing  at  all."  That  was  his 
manner.     No  bush-fighter  was  he,  no  back-biter,  no  secret  peddler 


420  HORACE   EUSHNELL. 

of  innuendoes,  but  a  face-to-face,  square  man,  always  ready  with  his 
yea  or  nay,  and  to  be  relied  on  forever.  Yea,  a  man  to  be  profoundly 
loved  for  his  immense  and  courageous  sincerity.  But  that  was  the 
last  of  his  frank  shots  at  me,  publicly  delivered.  Of  course  he  must 
have  been  often  tormented,  during  the  six  years  that  he  sat  here  be- 
fore me,  and  endured  my  goings-on  ;  and,  doubtless,  if  at  any  time 
some  one  really  wanted  to  know  what  he  thought  of  this  or  that  utter- 
ance of  mine,  he  considered  it  no  sin  to  say,  but  I  had  him  for  a 
steadfast  friend  to  the  end,  in  spite  of  everything.  He  insisted  that 
under  the  circumstances,  as  they  at  last  shaped  themselves,  I  ought 
to  come  to  his  church,  and  he  earnestly  argued  with  me  on  the  sub- 
ject ;  and  then  when  I  had  come,  he  stood  by — and  I  out  of  my 
heart  stood  by  him,  as  I  always  had,  and  still  do,  so  that  the  setting 
up  of  this  memorial,  now,  is  as  precious  to  me  as  though  it  were 
set  up  for  myself — and  more  so. 

When  I  began  to  put  down  these  personal  recollections  of 
mine  I  had  no  thought  of  carrying  them  so  far.  Pardon  me  if  I 
have  over-stepped  the  bounds  on  this  public  occasion. 

My  second  reason  for  gladness  at  what  is  this  day  done 
comes  out  of  my  grateful  sense  of  what  Dr.  Bushnell  has  done,  and 
will  for  a  long  time  continue  to  do,  in  liberalizing  theological 
thought,  and  getting  for  all  the  rest  of  us  a  large  and  safe  opportu- 
nity for  the  full  expression  of  what  we  honestly  and  religiously 
think.  He  fought  a  good  fight,  and  the  last  twenty-five  years  have 
had  the  advantage  of  it.  We  of  this  free  day  can  hardly  appreci- 
ate the  atmosphere  of  suffocation  in  which  he  tried  to  draw  his 
breath.  It  would  seem  scarcely  to  be  believed  by  us,  were  it  not 
historically  written  down,  that  he  was  compelled  to  make  the  con- 
tention which  he  did,  and  to  suffer  the  irritation  and  acrimony  and 
assault  of  many  brethren  intent  on  his  overthrow.  Not  the  over- 
throw of  his  opinions — I  do  not  now  mean  that — but  the  overthrow 
of  him  personally  and  the  casting  of  him  out  of  the  ministry.  A 
thoroughly  open  and  downright  attack  on  a  person's  opinions  is 
right  enough,  and  no  one  should  complain  of  that ;  but  to  go  on 
to  dislodge  him  from  the  Christian  ministry  is  another  thing.  It  is 
not  difficult  to  understand  the  feeling  of  those  who  took  this  course. 
It  was  natural  and  it  was  able  to  support  itself  by  considerations 
plausible  and  powerful.  They  had  no  doubt  that  that  busy-headed 
and  free-spoken  man  had  contradicted  fundamental  truth,  and  had 
done  it  in  a  manner  most  eloquent  and  insinuating.     They  believed 


HORACE   BUSHNELL.  421 

that  if  he  was  let  alone  to  propagate  his  ideas  and  the  contagion  of 
him  was  suffered  to  spread,  there  would  be  hosts  of  people  who 
would  be  unmoored  in  their  doctrinal  views,  and  that,  therefore, 
sooner  or  later,  hosts  of  souls  would  be  shipwrecked  for  time  and 
eternity.  They  clearly  saw  that,  they  thought ;  and  they,  in  con- 
science, could  not  suffer  such  process  of  doctrinal  demoralization 
to  go  on.  Had  they  lived  some  centuries  earlier,  they  would  have 
sincerely  considered  it  their  duty  to  take  Dr.  Bushnell's  life.  As  it 
was,  they  contented  their  consciences  by  striving  to  take  away  simply 
his  pastorate  and  his  ministerial  functions  generally.  But  they 
were  mistaken  in  their  duty.  They  were  undertaking  to  extinguish 
a  sacred  right — the  right  of  free  thought  and  free  speech  in  religious 
things  ;  a  right  which  has  its  limitations,  as  we  all  know,  so  that  in 
any  case  which  comes  up  the  question  is  pertinent,  Have  those 
limits  been  reached  by  this  man? — and  on  that  question  the 
honestest  may  divide,  as  men  did  on  Dr.  Bushnell.  The  one  point 
is,  which  party  was  right,  his  or  the  opposition  ?  In  view  of  the 
light  shed  upon  that,  by  the  quarter  of  a  century  which  has  since 
passed,  I  say,  he  was  right.  That  is,  it  was  his  right  to  stay  in  his 
pulpit,  and  speak  his  mind  and  publish  it,  and  leaven  public 
thought  as  much  as  he  could.  On  the  other  hand,  it  was  their  right 
to  head  him  off  by  any  amount  of  frank  and  determined  discussion. 

Well,  in  the  discussion  which  did  come  up,  and  in  the  attempts 
to  silence  him  by  ecclesiastical  action,  he  made  a  highly  powerful 
showing,  I  say,  and  did  a  grand  service  for  all  other  men — even  for 
his  own  foes,  if  they  had  but  known  it,  for  it  would  have  been  no 
kindness  to  them  and  to  their  posterity  to  let  them  put  our  Congre- 
tionalism  under  the  bondage  which  they  proposed,  and  prepare 
a  future  here  in  which  no  thorough  broad-feeling  and  self-respecting 
man  would  care  to  stand  as  a  Christian  minister. 

Dr.  Bushnell  had  some  exceptionally  strong  qualities  for  the 
conduct  of  a  campaign  of  controversy  like  that. 

In  the  first  place,  he  had  no  such  reverence  for  the  opinions  of 
other  people  as  would  make  him  weak  in  resisting  them.  Some 
good  men  lose  all  power  of  assertion  the  moment  their  positions 
are  largely  assailed.  They  succumb  to  the  simple  weight  of 
authority  against  them.  If  they  are  decisively  outvoted,  that  fact 
alone  changes  their  mind,  or  at  least  introduces  into  it  a  degree  of 
uncertainty,  so  that  they  have  not  much  more  to  say.  Dr.  Bushnell, 
on  the  contrary,  was  the  more  energized,  by  adverse  votes,  and  all 


422  HORACE   BUSHNELL. 

the  more  joyfully  put  his  powers  into  the  field.  In  some  respects  it 
would  have  been  an  improvement  in  him,  I  have  thought,  if  he 
could  have  a  little  more  bowed  down  before  great  authority ;  but 
in  the  one  matter  of  standing  in  a  desperate  gap,  one  man 
against  all  men,  and  deciding  a  particular  battle,  he  could  not  have 
been  much  improved.  His  small  respect  for  the  bare  dictum  of 
anybody  made  him  a  first-class  man  of  war.  And,  after  the  war 
was  past,  and  the  days  of  peace  had  come,  and  there  seemed  to  be 
less  need  of  that  burly  independence  of  his,  it  was  refreshing, 
often,  to  see  his  old  habit  still  work. 

Another  qualification  which  served  him  well  was  an  extraordi- 
nary amount  of  confidence  in  the  decisions  of  his  own  mind. 
What  he  saw  he  saw  clearly,  and  seeing  it  clearly,  stood  thereto.  He 
saw  clearly,  because  he  had  a  good  deal  of  brain  to  see  with.  And 
not  merely  mass  of  brain  did  he  have,  but  vitality  and  mobility,  so 
that,  when  he  addressed  himself  to  a  subject,  every  atom  of  him 
went  in  full-spring.  Some  great  heads  sit  down  on  a  subject  in  a 
lethargic,  old  grandmotherly  way,  and  they  fumble,  and  guess,  and 
miss  the  points,  and  run  things  together,  and  take  forever  to  reach 
a  decision,  and  then  do  not  know  so  well  as  they  would  like  to. 
But  he  went  into  matters  in  his  total  force  and  with  a  solid  enthu- 
siasm, catching  the  points,  and  tracing  the  lines  of  difference  with 
the  instinct  of  a  hound.  Wherefore,  it  was  natural  that  he  should 
be  confident  of  the  validity  of  his  own  perceptions  and  verdicts. 

Another  item  in  his  panoply  was  a  perfect  consciousness  of  his 
own  integrity  and  love  of  truth.  He  did  not  fight  for  mere  victory's 
sake.  He  had  no  selfish  ambitions  to  push  on.  He  was  simply 
bound  to  have  that  prevail  which  ought  to  prevail.  Where  a  man 
feels  like  that,  it  allies  him  with  God  and  puts  him  in  the  way  of 
mighty  furtherances  from  that  quarter,  and  makes  it  no  easy  task  to 
handle  him.  Dr.  Bushnell  was  human,  and  may  have  been  caught 
in  an  occasional  flush  of  personal  and  second-class  satisfaction  that 
this  or  that  antagonist  was  substantially  crushed  in  debate ;  as  was 
illustrated  many  years  ago,  when,  the  theological  times  being  hot 
and  men  on  both  sides  accustomed  to  put  in  as  for  life  and 
speak  their  whole  mind,  he  said  of  a  religious  newspaper,  long 
since  defunct :  "To  say  that  this  paper  is  behind  the  age  is  noth- 
ing, it  is  behind  all  ages.  It  is  as  ignorant  of  the  past  as  it  is 
opposite  to  the  future ;" — in  some  instances,  I  say,  I  should  not 
wonder  if   it  did  him  good  to  hear  the  ring  of  his  own  blows, 


HORACE   BUSHNELL.  423 

and  see  the  blood  start  where  he  hit.  But  the  prevailing  and 
characteristic  temper  of  his  mind  was  a  magnanimous  loyalty  to 
truth,  irrespective  of  all  persons,  personages  and  institutions.  That 
made  him  a  redoubtable  combatant. 

Also,  he  had  an  almost  unmatched  ability  to  state  a  thing  in  a 
way  to  make  it  seem  true.  Some  advocates  have  a  habit  of  pro- 
longed and  formal  argumentation,  step  by  step,  and  all  the  way 
through  you  find  yourself  quite  able  and  disposed  to  criticise  what 
they  say,  and  perpetually  dissent ;  but  with  Dr.  Bushnell,  whatever 
your  disposition  might  be,  he  was  continually  carrying  you  off  your 
feet  and  insinuating  his  views  into  your  soul,  by  the  peculiar  and 
most  rich  way  in  which  he  worked  up  his  subject,  in  both  substance 
and  form.  Many  a  time  I  have  listened  to  him  exhibiting  what  I 
had  not  been  accustomed  to  believe,  and  yet,  for  the  time  being, 
and  while  under  the  spell  of  his  statement  of  it,  I  would  catch  my- 
self slipping  into  belief,  and  would  need  to  walk  around  in  the  open 
air  a  little,  and  observe  where  the  sun,  moon  and  stars  were  actually 
situated,  before  I  could  restore  my  equilibrium.  It  would  be  a 
pretty  rank  absurdity  that  he  could  not  so  present,  if  his  heart  and 
convictions  were  really  in  it,  which  he  could  not  so  set  up  before 
you  and  glorify,  that  you  would  not  float  about  in  a  delicious  dream 
of  assent.  "Doctor,  what  did  you  preach  about,  yesterday?"  said 
a  visitor  in  Hartford  of  a  Monday  morning  to  him,  as  he  met  him 
on  the  sidewalk.  "  I  preached  a  sermon  to  show  that  we  know 
more  of  the  future  than  we  do  of  the  past,"  he  replied ;  and  I  have 
no  doubt  he  proved  it.  And  if  he  had  put  it  the  other  way,  he 
would  have  proved  that  too.  That  is,  if  his  conscientious  view  had 
been  that  we  know  more  of  the  past,  than  we  do  of  the  future,  he 
would  have  made  it  seem  so  by  his  splendid  statement  thereof. 
And  along  with  the  mere  statement,  the  orderly  and  masterly  mar- 
shaling of  his  materials  and  his  consummate  diction,  there  would 
have  been  a  certain  indescribable  imperativeness,  or  genial  insistance 
in  his  voice,  exceedingly  well  calculated  to  carry  the  day  with  his 
hearers. 

Well,  you  arraign  such  a  man  as  that  for  heresy,  and  put  him 
on  his  defence,  and  you  may  be  thankful  if  he  does  not  carry  you 
over  to  his  heresy — while  he  is  speaking,  at  all  events.  And  after 
he  has  finished  speaking,  and  you  have  settled  back  into  your  cus- 
tomary convictions,  you  will  be  likely  to  discover  that  certain 
ameliorations  have  crept  into  your  mind,  so  that  you  are  not  as 


424  HORACE   BUSHNELL. 

clear  on  the  question  of  forever  silencing  him,  as  you  were  before 
you  were  bewitched  by  the  curious  force  of  his  honest  plausibilities. 
That  is  the  way  it  works.  And  so,  when  Dr.  Bushnell  was  tried  by 
a  jury  of  his  peers,  it  was  not  possible  to  get  him  condemned. 
And  the  more  especially  was  it  not  possible  ever  to  condemn  him, 
because  then,  and  more  and  more  as  the  years  went  on,  it  was  per- 
fectly evident,  to  both  friend  and  foe,  that  he  was  a  deeply  religious 
man.  Whom  God  has  accepted  it  is  pretty  difficult  to  discard,  and 
say  he  shall  not  preach.  His  affiliations  with  God,  and  the  secret 
connections  of  his  inner  life  with  the  very  life  of  God,  were  not 
signified  and  expressed  in  the  old-fashioned  forms  of  utterance, 
and  he  often  wandered  from  the  beaten  paths  of  speech  so  com- 
pletely that  numbers  of  traditional  folks,  trying  to  follow  him,  did 
not  quite  know  where  they  were,  and  wondered  whether  they  were 
not  engaged  in  an  excursion  eternally  out  of  sight  of  land.  But  all 
that  sort  of  uncertainty  passed  away  at  last,  even  in  their  minds ; 
and  as  he  moved  on  gradually  into  the  sweet  ripeness  of  his  later 
life,  by  universal  consent  there  was  no  one  among  us  more  utterly 
attuned  to  divine  things,  more  profoundly  experienced  in  God, 
more  full  of  the  sober  satisfactions  of  a  rational  piety,  more  sensi- 
tive to  supernatural  impressions,  more  polarized  upon  those  ineffable 
things  which  make  the  bliss  of  that  heaven  into  which  he  was  soon 
to  ascend.  He  religious  !  Listen  to  his  voice  of  prayer.  Read 
his  amazing  sermons,  with  their  mighty  spiritual  intuitions ;  their 
great  reverberations  as  of  the  Eternal ;  their  tones  from  far  away ; 
their  oft-times  majestic  onflow,  made  musical  by  the  full  inspirations 
of  God.  No  dissonant  and  distempered  nature  ever  put  forth  such 
signs.  And  it  was  beautiful  to  see  in  his  old  age,  how  these  supreme 
qualities  came  to  the  front,  and  clothed  the  still  robust,  and  reso- 
lute, and  downright  workings  of  his  intellect  with  that  softness  and 
gentle  beauty  wherein  we  so  often  see  the  distant  great  mountains 
stand,  their  rugged  grandeur  toned  and  illumined  till  they  seem 
like  the  forms  of  a  dream. 

So  he  stood  for  us,  and  spoke  for  us,  and  won  the  day  for  us, 
in  some  important  respects,  by  force  of  exceptional  endowments 
and  great  gifts  from  the  hands  of  God. 

My  third  reason  for  satisfaction  that  a  memorial  of  him  has 
here  been  raised,  springs  from  my  sense  of  what  he  was  to  this 
city,  where  he  spent  his  life  of  work ;  and,  work  over,  laid  himself 
down  in  his  last  sleep.     The  fame  of  our  little  metropolis  rests  on 


HORACE  BUSHNELL.  425 

her  great  and  useful  men.  In  so  far  as  she  has  great  writers,  great 
statesmen,  great  inventors,  great  lords  of  business,  great  theologians, 
great  lawyers,  great  saints  and  so  on,  she  is  a  city  set  on  a  hill,  and 
a  prosperous  city. 

Well,  Dr.  Bushnell  carried  the  name  of  Hartford  to  the  ends  of 
the  earth.  Only  a  few  weeks  since,  I  received  a  letter  from  a 
prominent  clergyman  of  the  Church  of  England,  inquiring  about 
him,  and  he  spoke  of  him  as  his  "teacher  and  helper,"  and  went 
on  to  remark  on  "the  vast  and  constantly  increasing  number  of 
enthusiastic  friends"  whom  he  has  in  that  country.  The  themes  on 
which  Dr.  Bushnell  wrote  were  not  such  as  to  spread  abroad  his 
name  most  rapidly,  but  wherever  he  does  go  he  inevitably  makes  a 
large  impression,  and  lends  renown  to  the  name  of  the  city  which 
was  his  home.  And,  considering  that,  and  remembering,  too,  the 
much  more  than  common  interest  which  he  had  in  this  place,  as 
also  his  practical  works  for  its  improvement,  I  expect  to  see  a  statue 
of  him  on  yonder  Bushnell  Park  some  day,  set  there  by  his  proud 
and  grateful  fellow-citizens. 

But  if  this  city  has  cause  to  remember  him  and  perpetuate 
his  name  in  memorial  acts  and  offerings,  what  shall  I  say  of  the 
obligations  of  this  church,  on  which  he  spent  twenty-six  years  of 
toil,  in  all  the  walk  and  way  of  a  faithful  minister  of  Jesus  Christ? 
He  resigned  his  service  here  in  1859,  nineteen  years  ago,  and, 
during  that  time,  many  of  his  parishioners  have  died,  many  have 
removed,  and  all  of  those  of  his  congregation  who  were  children, 
and  too  young  to  understand  and  appreciate  him,  have  grown  up 
into  the  congregation  without  any  real  personal  knowledge  of  him 
as  a  preacher  and  pastor.  Therefore  the  number  of  those  remain- 
ing here  to  whom  he  ministered  is  not  large ;  but  they  will  under- 
stand it  when  I  say  that  perhaps  never  was  there  put  into  a  quarter 
of  a  century  of  public  preaching  and  teaching,  by  one  man,  such  a 
body  of  remarkable  thought  as  went  into  the  work  of  Horace 
Bushnell,  while  he  was  the  minister  of  this  church.  It  was  a  won- 
derful opportunity  to  sit  habitually  within  reach  of  that  man's 
utterance.  During  the  last  years  of  his  life  he  once  in  a  while  came 
into  our  chapel  service  on  Thursday  evening,  and  a  few  times,  when 
there  was  opportunity,  he  rose  and  spoke  ;  and  although  he  was 
then  past  all  power  of  concentrated  and  long  continued  mental 
labor,  being  in  a  state  of  physical  damage  that  would  have  quite 
cowed  most  men,  yet  the  things  he  said  in  those  little  talks  were  as 
28 


426  HORACE  BUSHNELL. 

characteristic,  and  as  unapproachable  in  their  kind  by  other  men,  as 
anything  he  ever  printed  in  the  days  of  his  prime.  I  recollect  with 
perfect  distinctness  how  almost  every  turn  in  those  off-hand  deliver- 
ances was  an  intellectual  surprise  to  me.  Well,  to  be  a  parishioner 
of  such  an  one  as  that,  to  be  in  habitual  contact,  not  only  with  his 
public  and  formal  utterances,  but  also  with  his  unique  and  massive 
personality,  as  revealed  in  private  and  brought  to  bear  in  the  daily 
detail  and  minutiae  of  life,  was  to  be  exalted  into  a  privilege  not 
easy  to  be  measured.  And  there  are  intellectual  and  cultivated 
men  in  this  city  who  look  back  to  the  time  when  he  was  speaking 
and  moving  among  us  as  a  time  almost  impossible,  in  the  eternal 
nature  of  things,  ever  to  be  repeated.  Of  course,  the  very  fact  that 
he  was  so  unique,  and  of  such  marvelous  endowments,  shut  him 
away  from  many  (even  from  their  apprehension)  ;  and  the  fact 
that  by-and-by  he  began  to  seem  to  violate  certain  old  and  cher- 
ished forms  of  religious  thought  shut  him  away  from  certain  others, 
so  that  they  underrated  his  mental  power  in  some  cases,  very  likely. 
But  to  those  who  were  able  to  receive  him,  and  really  gauge  his 
dimensions,  he  was  one  of  God's  most  rare  works,  and  a  singular 
intellectual  and  spiritual  blessing.  And  even  those  who  could  not 
harmonize  with  his  mind  and  his  doctrinal  ideas,  and  were  there- 
fore in  danger  of  misestimating  his  exceeding  abilities,  came  at  last 
to  accept  the  general  admiring  verdict  on  him — as  is  illustrated  by 
;  the  fact  that  the  aged  Mr.  Hosmer,  whom  this  city  has  just  lost, 
and  who  withdrew  from  this  church  as  a  practical  protest  against 
Bushnellism  in  theology,  was  one  of  the  most  liberal  and  most 
cordial  of  those  who  gave  to  this  memorial  here  set  up. 

I  have  spoken  thus  far  of  Dr.  Bushnell's  mind  as  a  bountiful 
gift  to  this  church,  but  his  work  here  was  not  a  magnificent  piece  of 
intellectualism,  and  that  alone.  His  great  powers  were  consecrated 
to  Christian  uses  and  Christian  results,  and  what  those  results  were 
I  might  show  a  little,  did  I  please  to  draw  facts  and  figures  from  our 
church  records.  But  only  a  little,  because  his  work  in  the  world 
was  more  universal  than  particular ;  and  even  where  it  was  particu- 
lar (as  in  sermons  preached  here),  the  things  accomplished  (three 
quarters  of  them)  are  not  capable  of  registration  on  church  records. 
The  full  statistics  of  him  you  will  have  to  wait  for  until  God  gets 
ready  to  expound  them.  To  hunt  them  up  now  would  be  to  search 
the  recesses  and  silences  of  thousands  of  souls,  and  to  go  also 
among  the  dead,  who  are,  and  ever  shall  be,  profoundly  different 


HORACE  BUSHNELL.  427 

from  what  they  would  have  been  but  for  him.  This  is  true  of  all 
Christian  ministers,  I  know  ;  but  of  him  it  is  singularly  true,  because 
he  did  not  aim  at  results  on  which  you  can  keep  tally  so  much  as 
some,  and  because  the  build  of  his  mind  was  such  as  to  qualify 
him  brilliantly  for  works  and  results  imponderable  in  any  known 
scales. 

Speaking  still  a  moment  more  on  our  satisfaction  that  this 
memorial  marble  has  been  prepared,  and  on  our  reasons  for  being 
thus  satisfied,  I  observe  that  it  is  always  a  benefit  to  survivors  them- 
selves to  thus  recall  and  celebrate  their  worthy  dead.  There  are  all 
sorts  of  culture  in  it  for  them,  and  in  the  memorials  which  they 
piously  erect  they  provide  a  culture  also  for  succeeding  generations. 
These  solemn  acts  of  remembrance  take  us  out  of  the  strain  and 
agitation  and  fret  of  the  Present  into  the  deep  and  soothing  quiet 
of  the  Past.  These  acts  awake  in  us  a  deep  personal  tenderness,  as 
bringing  us  into  communion  with  our  brethren  who  have  forever 
disappeared.  These  acts  put  us  genially  under  the  influence  of  the 
opinion,  and  the  personal  and  public  life,  of  the  Past.  They  there- 
fore render  us  deep-hearted,  and  teachable,  and  loyal  to  established 
verities  and  sanctities,  and  thoughtful  and  recollected  and  tranquilly 
earnest,  thus  saving  our  life  from  rawness,  and  immoderate  impulse, 
and  shallowness  and  the  various  infirmities  of  an  imperfect  civili- 
zation. 

And  as  to  the  people  of  the  future — why,  it  is  easy  to  learn 
what  we  do  for  them  by  the  durable  memorials  and  commemorations 
that  we  invent,  if  we  will  but  recollect  what  is  continually  done  for 
us  by  those  memorials  which  previous  generations  have  transmitted. 
How  did  you  feel  in  Westminster  Abbey,  as  you  passed  from  point 
to  point  and  gathered  up  into  your  mind  its  world  of  old  memories  ? 
How  did  you  feel  as  you  wandered  from  city  to  city  of  Italy — that 
incomparable  land — and  observed  its  cathedrals,  galleries  and  amphi- 
theatres ;  its  broken  columns,  historic  roads,  and  arches  of  triumph  ; 
its  fields  of  ancient  battle,  its  beautiful  seas,  its  isles  like  the  isles  of 
dream-land ;  its  disentombed  cities  and  arts,  and  reminders  mani- 
fold of  a  marvelous  long-gone  day — how  did  you  feel,  I  say,  and 
what  would  that  fascinating  country  have  been  to  you  had  the  former 
inhabitants  left  not  one  visible  vestige  of  their  existence  and  their 
greatness  ?  And  when  you  made  a  special  visit  to  the  grave  of  that 
one  man  who  has  most  influentially  entered  your  soul  and  your  life 
— some  poet  with  whom  you  have  habitually  communed  ;  some 


428  HORACE  BUSHNELL. 

philosophic  thinker  who  has  mightily  widened  your  horizon  and 
rectified  your  wandering  and  lawless  thought ;  some  theologian  or 
reformer  or  man  of  science ;  some  sweet  saint  whose  example  has 
suffused  your  life  with  light ;  some  martyr  whose  devotion  has  thrilled 
you  a  thousand  times,  and  has  always  been  your  one  bugle-call — at 
that  grave,  I  say,  what  has  it  not  been  to  you,  first  of  all,  that  you 
could  find  your  way  to  it  and  identify  it  anyway,  and  then  that  you 
found  it  suitably  honored,  so  that  you  could  read  there  his  dear  name, 
and  a  sentence  or  two  descriptive  and  significant  of  him,  and  could 
there  stand  in  communings  indescribable,  and  in  an  overflow  of  not 
unhappy  tears?  Aside  from  our  fellowship  with  our  God,  there  is 
nothing  on  earth  of  such  pure  delight,  and  such  enrichment,  as 
these  pilgrimages  through  the  Past,  and  these  visitations  at  the  rest- 
ing-places of  the  dead.  That,  then,  friends,  is  what  we  provide  for 
those  coming  after  us,  when  we  build  these  remembrances.  We 
dot  the  earth  with  sanctified  spots  to  which  our  children  will  resort, 
when  we  are  gone,  for  wholesome  reflection,  for  grateful  tears  and 
for  noble  inspirations.  Many  years  and  many  generations  from  now, 
we  hope,  there  will  be  those  who  will  look  upon  yonder  tablet,  and 
yonder  sculptured  head,  and  rejoice  that  Bushnell  once  lived,  and 
that  we  his  contemporaries  had  the  heart  thus  to  magnify  him,  and 
set  our  formal  seal  on  his  name  and  fame.  The  last  words  of  Dr. 
Bushnell's  will,  written  by  himself  not  long  before  he  died,  were 
these  :  "  With  unbounded  affection  for  those  coming  after,  known 
and  unknown,  I  subscribe  myself,  Horace  Bushnell."  I  fancy,  there- 
fore, that,  if  he  could  now  speak  to  us,  he  would  thank  us  that  we,  in 
what  we  have  done,  are  giving  him  an  opportunity  to  salute  those 
coming  after  and  speak  a  personal  word  in  their  friendly  ear.  We 
wish  we  could  have  perpetuated  his  actual  presence  on  earth,  and 
given  the  people  of  other  periods  to  know  by  their  own  sight  what 
a  man  he  was ;  but  he  could  not  longer  remain,  and  so  we  do  the 
best  we  can,  and  bestow  on  them  this  gift  and  sign  in  marble. 
Remembering,  as  we  do,  how  all  great  souls — and  all  small  ones,  too 
— desire  to  be  remembered  in  after  times,  and  to  have  a  part  and  lot 
in  all  things  done  under  the  sun,  we  think  it  would  be  selfish  in  us, 
and  a  mean  unbrotherliness,  if  we  did  not  honor  this  their  wish,  and 
prepare  for  them  what  immortality  on  earth  we  are  able.  What  title 
have  we  ourselves  to  be  remembered  after  the  grave  hides  us,  if  we  have 
not  grace  and  nobleness  enough  to  hallow  our  own  dead,  and  set 
up  this  and  that  barrier  against  the  oblivion  that  would  engulf  them  ? 


HORACE  BUSHNELL.  429 

And  while  we  perform  these  fraternal  acts,  we  should  not  insist 
that  our  dead  should  have  been  perfect  persons  in  order  to  be  enti- 
tled to  all  this  homage.  Nay,  we  will  not.  We  know  that  they 
were  of  our  flesh,  and  "  struggled  hard,  as  we  do  now,  with  sins  and 
doubts  and  fears."  So  it  was  with  him  of  whom  we  this  day  speak. 
And  when  I  praise  him  as  I  have,  I  well  understand  that  it  is  an 
erring  and  sinful  man  (nothing  but  a  man)  that  I  praise.  But  while 
I  recollect  and  so  confess,  it  does  not  to-day  take  any  hold  on  my 
feeling.  Fond  of  him  while  he  was  living,  and  not  disposed  to 
search  out  and  emphasize  his  faults  and  short-comings,  I  certainly 
am  not  the  less  fond  now  that  death  has  put  its  sacredness  upon  him. 
It  is  almost  impossible  to  speak  in  an  absolutely  judicial  tone  of  one 
who  has  done  us  great  service,  whether  he  be  living  or  whether  he 
be  dead.  The  idealization  of  love,  the  transfiguration  in  which  it 
clothes  its  own,  is  a  beautiful  infirmity — so  beautiful  that  we  may 
well  suffer  it,  I  think,  especially  in  a  world  where  there  is  much 
unsympathetic  criticism,  and  a  steady  flow  of  dispraise  and  belittle- 
ment,  even  against  those  who  are  most  after  the  pattern  of  the 
divine. 


JAMES  A.  GARFIELD. 


Delivered  at  Park  Church,  Hartford,  Sept.  25,  1881. 


It  is  impossible  to  add  aught  to  that  unprecedented  outpouring 
and  testimony  which  day  after  day  has  filled  the  daily  journals  ot 
this  country  and  the  world  in  regard  to  President  Garfield,  his  life 
and  his  death.  And  yet  it  does  not  seem  possible,  even  if  it  were 
fitting,  to  let  this  holy  day  pass,  and  our  worship  go  on,  without 
some  further  remembrance  of  him,  and  some  further  observations 
upon  that  great  event  which  we  all  so  deplore.  Will  you  give  me 
your  attention  then  for  a  few  moments  while  I  recount  some  things 
which  tend  to  make  this  very  sorrowful  loss  of  ours  not  wholly 
intolerable  to  our  hearts. 

It  is  enough  to  fill  us  with  a  deep  and  solemn  joy  that  our 
President  was  ready  to  go,  as  having  long  been  established  in  the 
Christian  faith,  and  long  accustomed  to  carry  the  burdens  and  meet 
the  ills  of  life  in  the  strength  of  Him  who  is  all  things  for  evermore 
unto  his  beloved.  He  was  born  into  a  family  steadfast  in  God.  He 
was  piously  and  diligently  taught  from  the  first.  He  went  forth  to 
his  first  tasks  with  the  faith  of  his  mother  strong  in  him.  He  con- 
secrated himself  to  the  service  of  his  country  in  war,  not  only  as  a 
patriot  but  as  a  Christian.  He  trusted  in  the  Lord  God  of  hosts  in 
all  the  perils  of  battle.  He  returned  to  civil  life  and  legislative 
service,  on  principle.  And  all  through  his  long  public  career  he 
kept  himself  personally  pure,  defended  this  and  that  in  God's  name, 
drew  close  to  God  in  prayer  and  frequent  worship,  and  commended 
himself  unto  all  men  as  a  disciple  of  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ.  There- 
fore it  was  to  be  expected  that  he  would  come  up  to  death  with  an 
inspired  courage,  as  he  did,  and  would  leave  the  millions  who  mourn 
for  him  to  rejoice  themselves  in  a  thankfulness  which  words  cannot 
express.     He  sleeps  in  Jesus,  blessed  sleep. 


JAMES  A.  GARFIELD.  431 

I  remind  you  too  that  although  at  first  his  death  seems  un- 
timely, because  he  was  not  yet  old,  and  because  his  children  were 
yet  young,  and  because  he  seemed  to  be  on  the  eve  of  doing  more 
for  his  country  than  he  had  ever  done,  nevertheless  he  had,  in  fact, 
rounded  out  an  uncommonly  full  life  ;  a  life  indeed  so  complete  in 
great  services  that  any  of  us  would  be  more  than  satisfied  if  we  could 
work  out  one  like  unto  it.  There  was  no  time  lost  in  his  fifty  years. 
In  his  very  childhood  he  began  his  tasks,  and  from  that  time  on  till 
his  breath  ceased  in  death,  his  hand  and  head  and  heart  were  busy 
and  his  manly  earnestness  never  flagged.  After  some  years  of  hard 
manual  labor,  and  after  some  suitable  preparation  for  it,  he  became 
a  teacher,  than  which  no  vocation  more  draws  on  a  man's  powers, 
more  inspires  a  true  and  good  heart,  or  more  tells  on  the  welfare  of 
the  world.  And,  according  to  all  accounts,  what  his  hands  found  to 
do  in  that  pursuit  he  did  with  his  might,  and  in  a  conscience  void 
of  offence  towards  God  and  man. 

Then  later,  in  1861,  he  with  characteristic  zeal  and  devotion 
responded  to  the  first  call  of  his  country  for  men  to  put  down  rebel- 
lion, and  on  that  new  field,  by  universal  consent,  he  carried  himself 
with  an  ability,  and  a  self-forgetfulness,  and  a  success,  very  honor- 
able to  himself  and  beneficial  to  his  country.  Already  he  had 
arrived  at  a  point  where  it  could  hardly  have  been  called  untimely 
had  he  died. 

But  his  most  serviceable  and  brilliant  years  were  still  before 
him,  for  now  he  enters  the  national  congress  and  for  eighteen  years 
on  that  conspicuous  floor,  and  at  one  of  the  most  important  periods 
of  our  history,  he  stood  in  the  front  rank  of  debaters  and  parliamen- 
tarians, upholding  the  great  principles  in  behalf  of  which  the  great 
war  had  been  fought  through,  assisting  to  lay  anew  the  foundations 
of  the  republic,  and  furnishing  to  the  political  student  and  the  states- 
man of  coming  years  a  body  of  speeches,  arguments,  and  orations, 
on  matters  fundamental  to  the  public  welfare,  as  vigorous  and  mas- 
sive, as  high-minded  and  as  true  to  the  laws  of  God,  as  anything  of 
the  kind  in  all  our  later  history. 

A  powerful  orator  on  the  field  of  civil  debate  and  in  perilous 
times,  a  man  of  presence  and  courage  and  great-heartedness,  and  of 
ingrained  and  incorruptible  high  principle,  is  one  of  the  finest  fig- 
ures on  earth ;  and  Mr.  Garfield  could  have  afforded  to  rest  from 
his  labors  if  he  had  left  only  his  parliamentary  renown  to  speak  for 
him  unto  succeeding  times. 


432  JAMES  A.  GARFIELD. 

But  I  do  not  know  but  the  man  has  accomplished  as  much 
in  his  dying  as  ever  he  did  by  his  living — though  it  should  be 
said  that  his  dying  would  have  been  a  comparatively  futile  event, 
had  he  not  already  greatly  commended  himself  to  his  people  by  the 
solid  and  even  resplendent  services  of  his  life.  Many  good  men 
and  saints  of  God  passed  away  on  that  sad  day  in  September  which 
saw  him  go,  but  the  world  at  large  did  not  even  know  who  they 
were,  and  could  only  think  of  his  going ;  and  the  reason  for  that 
was  (in  large  part)  that  his  life  had  been  filled  with  works  well-done 
that  bore  directly  and  visibly  upon  the  interests  of  this  entire  nation, 
and  therefore  of  all  mankind. 

But  many  a  man  of  great  services  has  not  been  so  fortunate  as 
our  President  was  in  working  great  results  upon  his  bed  of  death. 

Notice  how  that  matter  stands. 

In  the  first  place,  those  openings  of  domestic  love  which  have 
come  to  the  observation  of  mankind  during  our  long  and  terrible 
days  of  waiting  and  watching  by  his  bedside,  have  been  a  very  gospel 
to  the  universal  heart  of  man.  The  pathos  of  it  has  been  something 
utterly  irresistible.  Gen.  Garfield's  early  home  life,  his  affectionate 
laborious  mother,  his  older  brothers  sacrificing  themselves  for  him 
the  little  one,  his  first  contributions  to  the  comfort  of  the  family 
when  he  grew  to  be  old  enough  to  do  anything,  his  marriage  to  the 
girl  whom  he  had  taught  in  his  school,  his  devotion  to  her,  and  hers 
to  him,  during  all  the  days  of  their  early  hard  pulling  together,  his 
instinctive  recognition  of  her,  and  of  the  mother  who  bore  him,  in 
that  kiss  of  mingled  memory  and  affection,  so  much  commented 
upon,  which  he  gave  them  when  he  had  taken  the  Presidential  oath 
and  stood  at  last  on  one  of  the  awful  summits  of  the  world  ;  all  these 
home-bred  realities  which  have  been  gradually  disclosed  are  a  bene- 
diction, I  say,  and  an  education  to  all  human-hearted  persons  even 
unto  the  ends  of  the  earth.  And  then,  to  crown  all,  how  during 
these  last  eighty  days  of  trial  the  name  and  form  of  Lucretia  Gar- 
field have  gradually  come  into  the  foreground  ;  the  woman,  gentle, 
strong,  and  faithful ;  and  how  the  kings  of  the  earth,  and  the  states- 
men, magistrates,  and  parliaments,  of  the  whole  civilized  world  have 
saluted  from  afar  that  gentle  form,  and  have  rained  their  benedic- 
tions upon  her  head,  she  meanwhile  pursuing  her  daily  way  and 
bearing  her  daily  dreadful  burden  in  a  quietness  that  was  sublime  ; 
the  quietness  of  a  life-long  love  for  him  who  was  fading  away  before 
her  eyes,  and  of  a  life-long  trust  in  his  God  and  hers.     I  do  not 


JAMES  A.  GARFIELD.  433 

know  that  ever  in  the  history  of  the  world  has  a  woman  been  set 
upon  just  such  an  eminence,  and  in  the  blaze  of  it  has  carried  her- 
self in  such  absolute  modesty,  sweetness  and  strength. 

I  repeat ;  it  is  to  be  mentioned  among  the  felicities  of  General 
Garfield's  career,  and  as  one  of  his  final  services  to  mankind,  that 
he  and  his  in  the  providence  of  God  have  stood  before  the  world  in 
a  domestic  picture  most  edifying  to  contemplate.  It  is  one  star  in 
his  diadem  of  stars  that  his  domestic  life  would  bear  the  world-wide 
publicity  to  which  it  has  been  exposed. 

Another  work  which  he  has  wrought  in  his  dying,  as  he  was  not 
able  to  do  in  his  active  life,  is  this  :  he  has  exhibited  the  highest 
qualities  of  the  human  soul  under  a  pressure  to  which  not  many  are 
ever  subjected,  and  in  thus  doing  he  has  delivered  a  lesson  and  an 
exhortation  to  us  all.  Behold  !  what  patience  there  was  in  him,  what 
equanimity  under  the  terrible  fluctuations  of  his  case,  what  consid- 
eration for  those  about  him,  what  courage  to  the  very  last,  what 
steadfast  silent  refusal  to  load  those  whom  he  loved  with  any  anxiety 
or  foreboding  of  his  own,  if  any  such  he  had.  To  be  sure,  these 
special,  fine  attributes  were  in  him  long  before,  and  had  a  good  deal 
of  exercise  doubtless  in  his  years  of  war,  and  in  his  many  struggles 
of  debate  and  legislation  ;  but  they  came  to  their  utmost  in  his  long 
final  contest  with  death ;  and  besides  they  were  displayed  on  a 
vastly  more  public  theatre  than  ever  before,  and  under  circumstances 
impressive  beyond  all  parallel.  What  a  preacher  of  the  best  things 
of  character  he  was,  and  is. 

I  but  put  forth  a  variation  of  the  same  theme  when  I  add  that 
in  his  long  dying  he  did  a  matchless  service  in  whelming  all  sections 
and  classes  in  this  country  in  a  common  noble  and  tender  feeling, 
and  melting  all  nations  into  such  a  unity  of  the  heart  as  was  never 
known.  A  few  years  since,  we  had  not  those  wonderful  methods  of 
swift  intercommunication  which  we  now  have,  so  that  a  world-wide 
solidarity  of  feeling,  such  as  we  have  seen  of  late,  was  impossible. 
It  took  weeks  to  get  a  message  to  England,  and  months  to  reach  the 
outmost  nations ;  but  now  the  stroke  of  General  Garfield's  pulse  at 
any  given  moment,  was  simultaneously  observed  by  the  entire  circle 
of  the  populations  of  the  globe — and  this  sense  in  all  men's  minds 
that  they  were  sitting  together,  at  the  same  moment,  over  the  same 
sufferer,  watching  the  swell  and  ebb  of  his  life,  greatly  assisted  their 
interflow  of  emotion,  and  unified  them  in  a  manner  truly  wonderful. 
And  certainly  that  is  a  good  thing.     We,  the  nations,  are  divided 


434  JAMES  A.  GARFIELD. 

from  each  other  by  long  intervals  of  sea  and  land  ;  by  diverse  blood 
and  training  and  history,  by  the  memory  of  old  wars  in  some  in- 
stances, and  by  a  general  inability  to  see  eye  to  eye  on  a  thousand 
things.  But  these  many  tones  of  dissonance  were  all  drowned  in  one 
mighty  melody  of  peace  and  love  around  the  couch  of  our  suffering 
President ;  and  from  no  land  among  all  lands  have  we  received 
expressions  more  heart-melting  than  from  our  enemy  of  years  ago — 
Great  Britain — whose  Queen,  overriding  the  conventionalities  of  roy- 
alty, and  grounding  herself  on  her  womanhood  and  her  recollection 
of  her  own  sorrows,  has  put  herself  heart  to  heart  with  Mrs.  Garfield, 
and  with  our  whole  people,  in  dispatch  after  dispatch  from  her  own 
hand  ;  has  ordered  her  court  into  mourning,  and  by  a  command  to 
her  ambassador  at  Washington  has  placed  upon  the  President's  bier 
a  wreath  with  these  words  : — "  Queen  Victoria,  to  the  memory  of 
the  late  President  Garfield — an  expression  of  her  sorrow  and  sym- 
pathy with  Mrs.  Garfield  and  the  American  Nation,  Sept.  22,  1881." 
I  think  that  the  American  people  will  be  ready  now  as  never  before 
to  subscribe  their  amen  to  the  words  of  the  Poet  Laureate  of  Eng- 
land, when  he  said  and  sung  years  ago,  addressing  his  Queen  : 

"  May  you  rule  us  long, 

And  leave  us  rulers  of  your  blood, 

As  noble  till  the  latest  day; 

May  children  of  our  children  say, 

'  She  wrought  her  people  lasting  good.' 

Her  court  was  pure,  her  life  serene, 
God  gave  her  peace,  her  land  reposed, 
A  thousand  claims  to  reverence  closed 
In  her  as  Mother,  Wife  and  Queen. 

And  statesmen  at  her  council  met, 
Who  knew  the  seasons  when  to  take 
Occasion  by  the  hand  and  make, 
The  bounds  of  freedom  wider  yet, 

By  shaping  some  august  decree, 
Which  kept  her  throne  unshaken  still, 
Broad-based  upon  her  people's  will, 
And  compassed  by  the  inviolate  sea.*' 

Men  and  brethren,  in  this  unity  of  peoples  and  kingdoms, 
brought  about  of  late  by  our  anxiety  and  woe,  you  have  an  illustra- 
tion of  what  is  permanently  possible,  yes,  of  what  shall  actually  be, 
in  the  golden  age  of  the  world,  when 


JAMES  A.  GARFIELD.  435 

"  No  more  shall  nation  against  nation  rise, 
Nor  ardent  warriors  meet  with  hateful  eyes, 
Nor  fields  with  gleaming  steel  be  covered  o'er, 
The  brazen  trumpets  kindle  rage  no  more; 
But  useless  lances  into  scythes  shall  bend, 
And  the  broad  falchion  in  a  ploughshare  end." 

Another  victory  of  our  dying  President,  and  another  universal 
service  to  right  thinking  and  right  feeling,  is  the  demonstration 
furnished  in  his  case  that  the  radicalism  of  those  who  say,  "  One 
man  is  as  good  as  another,"  meaning  thereby  that  a  man  is  to  be 
taken  for  what  he  personally  is,  and  is  to  have  no  esteem  or  defer- 
ence on  account  of  any  official  standing  he  may  have,  is  wrong  and 
cannot  be  vindicated.  We,  in  this  country,  (many  of  us,)  have 
often  ridiculed  the  homage  paid  to  kings  and  queens  and  other 
grand  officials  in  the  old  lands  over  the  sea,  especially  in  instances 
where  those  grandees  have  been  in  themselves  insignificant,  and 
even  contemptible.  But  the  truth  is,  the  person  who  happens  to  be 
the  sovereign  of  England  (for  example,)  at  any  given  time,  be  that 
person  man  or  woman,  wise  or  foolish,  moral  or  immoral,  has  two 
great  distinctions  which  entitle  him  or  her  to  unusual  deference. 
First  (to  use  the  very  language  of  St.  Paul  on  this  subject)  ;  "He  is 
the  minister  of  God;"  "for  there  is  no  power  but  of  God;  the 
powers  that  be  are  ordained  of  God  ;"  "for  this  cause  pay  ye  tribute 
also,  for  they  are  God's  ministers."  Therefore,  when  Thomas  Jef- 
ferson wrote  in  our  Declaration  of  Independence,  in  1776,  that: 
"All  governments  derive  their  just  power  from  the  consent  of  the 
governed,"  he  did  not  cover  the  whole  truth  on  that  subject.  He 
did  not  bring  in  St.  Paul's  idea  at  all.  It  was  natural  that  a  man  of 
his  religious  views  should  not.  Moreover,  it  was  natural  that  all  our 
people  in  that  day  should  tend  to  lose  sight  of  the  divine  side  of 
human  government,  and  dwell  altogether  on  the  people  as  the  source 
of  power  and  authority,  because  they  were  just  then  falling  back  on 
the  extreme  right  of  revolution  against  their  oppressive  King, — 
George  the  Fourth  of  England — who  had  lost  his  divine  right  to  be 
their  monarch  if  ever  he  had  any,  they  would  all  say.  As  time  went 
on,  and  our  national  experience  was  enlarged  in  several  great  crises, 
(notably  in  the  war  of  the  Rebellion,  in  186 1,)  men  began  to  recover 
that  lost  doctrine  of  Rulers  the  Ministers  of  God  : — and  our  whole 
onset  on  the  insurrectionary  southern  people  was  just  a  gigantic 
statement  of  that  doctrine,  as  against  their  Jeffersonian  notion  that 


436  JAMES  A.  GARFIELD. 

no  government  has  any  authority  a  moment  longer  than  the  people 
like.  We  have  shed  the  blood  of  myriads  of  men  and  have 
expended  money  by  the  billion,  to  establish  St.  Paul's  assertion, 
and  prove  that  a  civil  ruler  is  more  than  that  same  man  would  be 
as  a  private  citizen,  and  is  entitled  to  more  consideration. 

And  now  in  these  last  days  the  same  truth  has  been  announced 
in  another  way — namely :  in  the  honor,  at  once  magnificent  and 
tender,  which  has  been  accorded  to  General  Garfield,  with  a  spon- 
taneity and  a  whole-heartedness  which  were  universal.  It  was 
because  he  was  the  anointed  of  God  (that  in  part)  that  the  best 
surgeons  the  land  could  afford  stood  guard  at  his  bedside,  that 
innumerable  letters  of  love  and  good  cheer  were  poured  in  upon 
him,  that  every  Sabbath  service  in  the  land  made  mention  of  his 
case  before  God,  that  every  day  at  millions  of  family  altars  petitions 
were  sent  up,  that  other  lands  hailed  him  and  blessed  him  in  con- 
tinual telegrams,  that  railway  companies  stood  ready  to  carry  him 
whithersoever  he  would,  ministering  to  his  weakness  by  their  utmost 
skill,  as  though  they  were  carrying  an  angel ;  and  now  that  he  is 
dead,  it  is  because  God's  minister  is  dead  that  the  bells  are  tolled 
all  round  the  world. 

I  said  that  as  over  against  that  radicalism  which  holds  that  one 
man  is  as  good  as  another,  the  truth  is,  every  ruler  has  two  distinc- 
tions which  make  it  fitting  he  should  be  revered.  The  first  distinc- 
tion I  have  mentioned.  He  is  the  vice-regent  of  the  Most-High. 
And  the  second  is,  that  in  him  is  embodied  and  symbolically  set 
forth  everything  that  makes  the  nation  whereover  he  presides  to  be 
a  nation.  The  American  people  are  fifty  millions  strong,  and  Gen- 
eral Garfield  in  his  own  person  was  those  millions.  We  all  headed 
up  in  him.  So  we  felt  and  so  it  was.  When  he  was  shot,  we  were 
shot.  When  the  Pennsylvania  Railway  Company  took  him  up  ten- 
derly in  its  arms,  him  and  his  whole  household,  and  fled  with  him 
as  on  wings  to  the  healing  airs  of  the  sea,  hushing  all  along  the  way 
the  thunder  of  their  countless  trains,  and  rolling  into  Long  Branch 
with  their  precious  burden  like  armies  coming  home  from  victory, 
every  man  of  us  felt  that  he  himself  had  received  a  personal  atten- 
tion from  that  great  corporation.  Great  is  the  power  of  symbols 
and  symbolic  persons.  Remember  what  the  flag  was  to  us  in  1861, 
when  it  was  attacked.  In  ordinary  times  it  swings  from  its  staff  a 
beautiful  object  and  sufficiently  dear ;  but  in  times  of  national  peril, 
by  a  grand  movement  of  the  imagination,  the  people  flock  to  it,  and 


JAMES  A.  GARFIELD.  437 

set  their  eyes  upon  it,  and  glorify  it  beyond  all  power  of  expression  ; 
because  it  is  natural  in  great  excitements  to  sum  up  all  that  we  think 
and  all  that  we  feel  in  symbols  that  are  compact  and  vivid  and  con- 
tinually visible.  So  the  army  can  the  better  push  into  the  battle 
with  that  in  sight.  So  the  dying  soldier  can  the  more  calmly  die 
when  that  waves  before  him.  So  the  legislator  can  the  more  devot- 
edly act  for  his  country's  good,  when  in  the  air  over  the  hall  where 
he  sits  floats  that  emblem  of  nationality. 

In  the  case  of  the  flag  our  enthusiasm  is  aroused  by  a  symbol 
pure  and  simple — that  is,  the  flag  in  itself  is  nothing,  all  its  interest 
is  symbolical — in  the  case  of  a  symbolic  person,  as  our  President, 
there  are  three  interests  combined ;  first,  the  man ;  secondly,  the 
man  as  God's  agent ;  and  thirdly,  the  man  as  the  representative  of 
our  nationality.  And  if  the  man  in  himself  is  strong,  good,  and 
attractive  (that  first) , — and  if  the  man  has  been  duly  chosen,  so 
that  he  is  God's  minister  and  our  representative  indeed  (that 
second),  then  all  conceivable  forces  of  influence  are  met  in  him, 
and  there  is  no  end  to  the  delight  wherewith  his  people  look  upon 
him,  no  end  to  their  indignation  when  he  is  insulted,  or  their  grati- 
fication when  he  is  respected,  no  end  to  their  sorrow  when  he  suf- 
fers, their  mourning  when  he  dies,  and  their  tearful  thankfulness 
when  the  nations  of  the  earth  uncover  their  heads  about  his  bier, 
and  lift  up  their  dirges  and  the  lamentations  of  their  bells  over  his 
grave. 

Thank  God  that  the  essentially  representative  character  of  a 
ruler  has  again  been  mightily  declared, — his  character  as  representing 
God,  and  his  character  as  the  personification  of  his  nation, — and 
thank  God  that  Mr.  Garfield  was  such  a  kind  of  man,  so  able, 
noble  and  good,  that  when  we  come  to  pay  him  the  official  honors 
that  belong  to  him,  we  are  not  filled  with  any  reluctances  as  though 
Garfield  the  man  was  less  and  meaner  than  Garfield  the  magistrate, 
but  contrariwise,  we  gather  about  him  with  the  entire  affirmation  of 
our  judgment  and  conscience,  and  the  entire  homage  of  our  hearts. 

And  now,  one  other  point,  wherein  he  did  a  special  great  work 
in  his  last  days,  and  made  his  bed  of  death  more  a  throne  than  his 
chair  of  office  could  ever  be. 

In  the  first  place,  his  protracted  disability,  with  its  intense  fluc- 
tuations of  hope  and  fear,  has  brought  this  nation  to  their  knees, 
with  remarkable  unanimity  and  earnestness  ;  and  has  notified  them  of 
their  own  instinctive  and  ineradicable  confidence  that  there  is  a  God, 


438  JAMES  A.  GARFIELD. 

and  a  personal  God,  and  a  God  who  desires  to  be  entreated  by  his 
creatures.  In  prosperous  times  it  is  easy  to  conceive  doubts  and 
bring  forth  many  vaporings  of  argument  to  the  effect  that  as  likely 
as  not  there  is  not  any  God,  or,  if  there  be,  that  he  cannot  certainly 
be  found  out ;  or,  if  he  can  be  found  out,  that  it  is  of  no  use  to  urge 
him  to  do  this  or  that,  his  mind  having  been  made  up  from  all  eter- 
nity, and  his  plans  laid  out.  But  in  the  stress  of  disaster  the  soul  is 
apt  to  settle  back  upon  its  inevitable  knowledge,  its  primary  affirm- 
atives which,  so  often  as  any  way,  lie  below  its  ordinary  easy  obser- 
vation, (just  as  in  dying,  not  unfrequently,  the  memory  calls  up 
numerous  things  which  had  not  been  thought  of  since  childhood, 
and  which  would  be  supposed  to  have  lapsed  from  the  mind  for- 
ever)— and  so,  in  the  twinkling  of  an  eye,  you  shall  see  the  forty 
atheistic  surmises  that  may  have  half  undermined  the  faith  of  a  great 
people,  exploded  as  by  the  seven  thunders  of  God  ;  and  down  upon 
their  knees  they  go,  and  the  sky  resounds  with  their  outcries.  Not 
every  one  of  their  outcryings  has  in  it  all  the  elements  of  prayer ; 
nevertheless  it  is  good  that  God  is  thus  practically  acknowledged ; 
and  what  a  work  he  has  accomplished,  who  in  prostration  and  fee- 
bleness, yea,  and  by  force  of  that  very  feebleness,  has  thus  con- 
strained and  solemnized  and  bowed  down  a  whole  nation. 

But  it  turns  out  that  this  wrestling  unanimity  of  petition  has 
been  resolutely  negatived  by  the  Most  High ; — in  which  I  notice 
two  things.  First,  a  most  impressive  self-assertion,  and  awful  sov- 
ereignty, on  his  part ;  and  secondly,  a  special  challenge  to  our  faith. 
I  cannot  well  describe  my  sense  of  the  majesty  of  God  as  made 
known  in  this  his  recent  refusal  of  the  desire  of  his  people.  O  !  that 
monarchal  will  !  Albeit  by  no  means  a  cold  will,  but  a  warm  one. 
It  is  not  likely  that  He  who  created  Mr.  Garfield,  and  redeemed  him, 
and  brought  him  into  the  kingdom  of  his  grace,  would  withhold  from 
him  any  good  thing  out  of  sheer  cold-heartedness.  No,  that  en- 
throned will,  before  which  all  creatures  are  as  insects  in  the  shadow 
of  Mt.  Blanc,  is  as  suffused  with  every  conceivable  geniality  as  is 
that  same  white  and  holy  Swiss  Mountain  when  the  descending  sun 
has  laid  upon  it  its  tinges  and  blushes  and  heavenly  afterglows.  In 
so  far  as  God's  will  is  resolute  and  will  not  bend  at  this  or  that 
point  where  we  think  we  would  like  it  to  bend,  the  explanation  must 
be  that  he  sees  all  things  in  their  relations  and  the  end  from  the 
beginning,  and  is  committed  by  the  whole  stress  of  his  love  to  safe- 
guard all  welfares  ;  so  that  that  absolutism  of  his  which  rejects  a 


JAMES  A.  GARFIELD.  439 

nation's  prayer  is  just  his  all-including  tenderness  doing  its  proper 
work.  It  would  be  a  dreadful  state  of  things  if  people,  by  massing 
themselves  and  prolonging  their  urgencies,  could  get  in  upon  the 
feeling  of  God  in  a  way  to  make  him  forget  his  wisdom  for  the 
moment,  and  his  obligations  of  affection  to  other  peoples  and  in- 
terests, and  bestow  a  gift  as  when  an  inconsiderate  mother  unable  to 
resist  a  teasing  child,  grants  unto  him  that  which  eventually  destroys 
his  life. 

The  subject  of  prayer,  its  answers  and  refusals,  is  one  too  large 
to  be  treated  just  here ;  so  that  all  I  can  undertake  to  say  for  the 
present  is,  that  in  God's  denial  of  us  of  late,  we  have  an  inconceivably 
robust  notice  served  on  us  of  his  fatherly  absolutism  ;  and  a  call  also 
to  trust  him  perfectly  because  although  absolute  he  is  fatherly.  We 
have  it  for  our  special  privilege  just  now  to  walk  by  faith.  Plainly 
we  cannot  walk  by  sight.  If  our  President  had  been  spared  in  con- 
cession to  our  agony  we  should  have  had  a  touch  of  sight,  (such  as 
God  often  grants,)  but  as  it  is,  there  is  nothing  left  for  us  but  to  rest 
in  faith — unless  indeed  we  choose  to  let  our  grief  run  away  with  us 
and  land  us  in  Atheism.  And  Atheism  is  not  sight  but  rather  every- 
thing negative,  and  dark,  and  distressing. 

For  my  part,  I  have  taken  pains  years  ago,  to  look  this  matter 
of  prayer  through,  in  so  far  as  one  can ;  and  the  result  is  that  the 
removal  of  our  dear  President  when  all  mankind  wanted  him  and 
prayed  for  him,  not  merely  does  not  bewilder  my  hold  on  God,  but 
sends  me  to  him  in  a  new  devotion.  Yes,  it  is  a  solemn  exhilaration 
to  observe  that  august  fortitude  wherewith  he  adheres  to  the  best, 
even  though  for  the  time  being  he  may  seem  inclement  to  the  suf- 
fering creatures  and  multitudes  who  throng  to  his  feet.  You  are 
safe,  and  I  am  safe,  and  all  things  are  safe,  under  the  shelter  of  an 
administration  which  is  braced  and  buttressed  by  such  integrities. 

And  as  to  prayers,  why,  put  them  in  none  the  less  because  of 
these  invincibilities  in  God,  because  he  has  told  us  to,  and  because 
many  a  blessing  is  secured  by  prayer,  (even  visibly  sometimes,)  and 
because  God's  refusals  are  rich  in  glorious  results,  precisely  as  the 
wealth  of  many  a  man  is  the  result  of  self-denials  inculcated  and 
forced  upon  him  by  his  father  when  he  was  young  and  more  full  of 
wishes  and  longings  than  of  wisdom. 

Brethren,  I  have  thrown  upon  one  of  the  gloomiest  and  most 
heart-breaking  events  of  the  ninteenth  century,  two  or  three  sweet 
cross-lights  of  comfort ;  and  whereinsoever  the  death  of  this  much 


440  JAMES  A.  GARFIELD. 

admired  and  beloved  man  still  seems  gloomy  to  your  sympathetic 
and  disappointed  feeling,  I  pray  that  you  will  try  to  rest  in  faith, 
patiently  waiting  for  that  sure  day  when  God's  full  explanations  shall 
pour  in,  and  every  darkness  of  his  earthly  providence  shall  seem  to 
shine  before  our  adoring  eyes  with  an  absolute  refulgence,  even  the 
refulgence  of  his  perfect  love. 

And  now  on  the  morrow,  in  the  midst  of  I  know  not  what 
pagentries  of  mourning,  attended  by  an  innumerable  concourse  of 
his  countrymen,  under  the  eye  of  his  wife,  his  children  and  his 
mother,  almost  in  sight  of  his  home  and  his  birth-place,  on  the 
shore  of  that  inland  sea  he  loved  so  well,  in  the  very  spot  he  had 
often  mentioned  as  the  one  in  which  he  would  like  to  lie,  he  will  be 
lowered  to  his  rest.  And  by  our  sympathetic  feeling  we  shall  all  be 
there — we  and  our  wives  and  our  children — we  shall  all  be  there. 
And  while  the  bells  of  Cleveland  and  the  measured  martial  music 
fill  the  wide  spaces  over  that  city  with  their  sorrow,  our  bells  from 
Canada  to  the  Gulf  and  from  the  Eastern  to  the  Western  sea  will 
also  all  sound  out  their  grief;  while  from  the  Cathedrals  and  the 
countless  towers  of  our  mother-land  responsive  tones  pour  forth, 
joined  in  the  upper  air  by  the  murmur  and  mourning  of  the  peopled 
world. 


LEONARD  BACON 


Delivered  at  the  General  Association  of  Connecticut  Congrega- 
tionalists  at  mlddletown,  conn.,  june  20,  1882. 


I  never  succeeded  in  telling  Dr.  Bacon  how  much  I  admired 
him  and  loved  him ;  he  was  not  a  soil  that  seemed  naturally  to  drink 
in  that  kind  of  rain,  and  the  rain  grew  discouraged ;  neither 
have  I  been  able  to  speak  my  mind  about  him  since  he  died.  When 
a  vessel  goes  to  sea  overloaded,  she  ships  water  and  misbehaves,  and 
how  could  I,  loaded  up  with  Leonard  Bacon  and  my  heart  sunk  to 
the  gunwales,  voyage  out  into  the  perils  of  public  discourse  in  mem- 
ory of  him.  I  think  to-day  that,  were  all  time  at  my  command,  I 
would  put  to  sea  and  take  my  luck,  sink  or  swim.  As  it  is  I  will 
only  make  a  few  movements  and  small  circuits  in  plain  sight  of  land. 
In  whatever  circuit,  however,  it  is  inevitable  that  we  hear  the  great 
monotone  of  the  open  and  free  ocean  ; — or,  to  come  back  to  literal 
speech,  it  is  impossible  even  to  speak  the  name  of  Dr.  Bacon,  with- 
out calling  up  the  grand  sound  of  his  great  character  and  his  great 
life. 

It  has  been  said  that  falling  in  love  amounts  to  a  liberal  educa- 
tion ;  and  I  put  it  down,  therefore,  as  the  first  thing  wherein  I  was 
profoundly  beholden  to  this  man,  that  he  furnished  me  an  object  on 
which  to  pour  myself  forth  in  a  practically  unlimited  way.  In  my 
judgment  the  principal  thing  in  the  world  is  its  men  and  its  women. 
Great  and  dear  is  this  green  month  of  June,  made  originally  for  the 
General  Association  of  Connecticut  to  assemble  itself  in  and  open 
out  its  happy  feeling  ;  great  the  overarch  of  heavenly  blue  ;  great  the 
careering  night  with  its  embellishment  of  stars ;  great  and  solemn 
the  outstretch  of  astronomic  spaces ;  great  and  also  bewitching, 
29 


442  LEONARD  BACON. 

that  everlasting  march  and  miscellany  of  phenomena,  which  consti- 
tutes our  environment  here.  Nevertheless,  let  the  heart  speak,  and 
the  greatest  interest  in  God's  whole  round  of  fascinations  is  the 
people.  Multitudes  of  them  I  have  never  really  gotten  hold  of  in 
any  visible  way ;  but  I  take  a  sense  of  them  stretching  away  beyond 
my  horizon  and  I  have  a  feeling  of  their  company  present  and  to 
come  ;  many  of  them  to  whom  I  do  have  access  are  not  superfinely 
made  up,  but  then  no  more  am  I ;  so  that  they  and  I  have  a  good 
deal  of  mutuality  and  I  humbly  look  for  more  ;  but  among  the  many 
of  all  sorts  who  constitute  the  grand  total  of  mankind,  there  emerges 
now  and  then  some  bulky  personage,  bulky  and  balanced  and 
supreme  and  full  of  the  very  energy  of  God,  in  whom  is  summed 
and  typified  the  scattered  potentialities  of  man ;  so  that  the  rest  of 
us  spontaneously  take  him  up,  and  point  to  him,  saying  : — "There 
we  are,  there  play  our  thoughts,  orderly  and  beautiful,  there  moves 
our  majesty,  there  shine  we  at  our  best,  there  is  told  forth  the  ulti- 
mate stature  of  man  on  earth." 

What  I  most  want  to  say  though  just  here,  is  this  : — That  these 
personal  instances  are  an  eminent  Godsend  in  that  they  are  some- 
thing on  which  we  can  flood  ourselves  out  in  a  manner  and  measure 
that  is  very  educative  to  us,  very  expanding,  very  full  of  touches  of 
the  infinite,  and  of  course  very  satisfying.  Nor,  to  tell  the  truth, 
is  it  necessary  that  these  adored  ones  of  ours  should  be  perfect  or 
approximately  perfect,  but  only  that  there  shall  be  so  much  of  them, 
and  of  such  quality,  or  so  much  of  subtle  adjustment  of  us  to  them 
and  of  them  to  us,  that  love  and  enthusiasm  can  get  a  fair  start ;  for 
these  beautiful  passions,  once  in  motion,  have  in  them  a  great 
power  of  idealization.  Like  the  sun,  they  make  all  things  shine, 
they  irradiate  blemishes,  they  make  midnight  bright. 

We  look  to  young  men  for  these  hero-worshipings  in  the  main  ; 
but  numbers  of  times  in  my  later  years  I  have  found  myself  caught 
in  the  same  gracious  fury ;  and  I  have  always  been  grateful  to  Dr. 
Bacon  that  he  was  born  of  such  size,  and  so  diligently  amplified 
himself  as  his  many  years  went  on,  and  built  himself  up  so  four- 
square, proportionate  and  solid  in  character,  and  withal  made  so 
few  mistakes,  that  I  could  dwell  upon  him  in  my  heart  with  more 
than  contentment,  could  fire  up  over  him  on  occasion,  in  a  total 
conflagration  of  good  feeling,  and  can  contemplate  him  now  in  his 
completed  life,  as  one  looks  back  to  some  old-time  masterpiece, 
some  picture,  some  poem,  some  cathedral,  some  oratorio  : — oratorio, 


LEONARD  BACON.  443 

I  say,  for  a  well-rounded  and  true  life  is  really  a  musical  product ; 
it  touches  us  as  melodies  touch  us,  it  has  in  it  the  secret  law  of  har- 
monies, it  coasts  the  infinite  as  all  great  music  does,  it  takes  diverse 
ranges  of  expression,  and  it  is  an  organized  unit  of  life  most  impres- 
sive and  delightful  to  the  beholders. 

If  I  descend  from  this  general  outburst  of  gratitude  to  analyt- 
ical portraiture,  and  try  to  taste  Dr.  Bacon  in  his  elements,  I  strike 
directly,  of  course,  upon  those  features  of  his  make-up  which,  out- 
standing as  they  are,  like  promontories,  all  the  world  has  noted  over 
and  over. 

There  was  his  admirable  physique — not  tall  and  stately,  except 
when  preternaturally  magnified  under  the  force  of  some  immeasur- 
able subject  from  crown  to  sole — not  handsome,  especially  if  by 
handsome  you  mean  pretty  (not  that,  God  forbid)  : — a  physique 
nevertheless,  distinctly  individualized  and  powerfully  masculine,  with 
a  head  over  all  and  a  face  which  one  is  very  pleased  to  remember ; 
a  head  massive  and  suitably  set  off  with  an  abundance  of  energetic 
and  characteristic  hair,  which  in  a  rousing  debate  took  a  part  as 
distinct  as  the  doctor  himself  did,  and  much  enforced  his  ideas,  I 
used  to  think ;  a  face  of  much  strength,  sometimes  all  strength, 
sometimes  all  humor,  sometimes  all  tenderness,  sometimes  all  three, 
a  truly  royal  and  most  usable  face — a  physique  of  great  toughness 
and  foreordained  to  longevity.  So  tough  and  enduring  that  his 
handwriting  was  untrembling  to  the  last,  his  voice  deep-toned  and 
gravely  melodious,  with  never  a  touch  of  old-man's  piping  in  it,  and 
all  his  mental  action  enforced  and  sent  home  by  a  great  bodily 
emphasis.  So  his  life  was  one  of  thorough-going  health ;  not  dys- 
peptic, not  puling,  not  marked  by  passages  of  collapse  and  foreign 
voyages  for  health,  not  set  upon  by  physicians  and  medicines  and 
the  other  makeshifts  of  mortality ;  but  full  of  work  and  pertinacity 
and  honest  fighting — all  of  which  endurability  was  pathetically  sig- 
nified in  the  fragmentary,  and  scarcely  dried  manuscript  he  left  when 
he  took  his  sudden  march  out  and  away. 

Such  was  the  outer  Bacon  as  he  appeared  to  my  eyes,  and  I 
expatiate  upon  these  details  with  a  mysterious  fondness,  and  I  do 
not  now  see  why  I  should  not  be  utterly  disconcerted  and  dissatis- 
fied, if  I  ever  meet  Dr.  Bacon  in  some  improved  body.  I  do  not 
at  present  agree  that  it  can  be  improved.  But  sufficient  unto  the 
day  is  the  evil  thereof. 

Pass  inward  now  a  little  upon  the  man.      And  where  shall  I 


444  LEONARD  BACON. 

begin  ?  I  do  not  know  that  it  makes  any  difference  where  I  begin. 
Strike  in  anywhere,  and  instantly  you  reach  the  Baconian  flavor,  as 
an  apple  bitten  here  or  there  smacks  of  its  stock  and  type. 

It  is  a  relishable  thing  to  me  to  celebrate  his  combativeness, 
and  his  very  respectable  and  valuable  self-esteem,  and  his  inflam- 
mable indignation,  and  his  beautiful  target-practice  on  opponents  in 
debate,  and  his  courage  to  state  a  thing  when  it  needed  to  be  stated, 
and  his  agility  in  getting  on  to  all  sides  of  a  subject  and  speaking 
on  them  all,  with  a  fine  disdain  now  and  then  of  what  Dr.  Bacon  had 
said  on  a  previous  occasion — at  least  so  it  looked  to  superficial 
spectators.  All  these  strong  and  lively  virtues  of  his  I  recall  with  a 
particular  gusto — and  all  the  more  because  they  are  the  sort  that  so 
easily  carry  a  man  into  downright  misdoing  and  a  poor  show  of 
himself,  but  in  him  stopped  always  short  of  that ;  right  on  the 
crumbling  edge  sometimes  but  never  over  the  edge*.  O  !  he  was  a 
master  of  edged  tools  !  He  swung  them  and  they  glittered  and 
numerous  things  and  persons  were  cut  down,  but  he  had  no  love  of 
savagery,  and  he  was  as  tender  of  an  opponent  as  of  a  friend,  pro- 
vided he  would  stay  slain  and  dead,  where  he  belonged. 

I  use  the  images  of  warfare,  but  I  need  not  say  to  one  who 
knew  him  that  no  carnal  weapons  ever  got  mixed  into  his  use  of 
whatever  sharpness.  It  has  been  my  privilege  to  receive  numbers 
of  his  thrusts,  but  I  never  felt  in  the  least  hurt  by  them.  The  last 
totally  destructive  shot  he  discharged  at  me,  was  fired  a  year  ago 
last  winter.  I  went  to  New  Haven  to  deliver  a  lecture  before  the 
theological  students,  and,  having  a  few  moments  to  spare  beforehand, 
was  addressed  by  Dr.  Porter  with  the  encouraging  remark,  "Well, 
Brother  Burton,  we  are  ready  to  receive  light  down  here  even  from 
Hartford."  While  the  ripple  of  that  pleasantry  was  passing  around, 
Dr.  Bacon  dropped  in,  and  was  told  of  what  had  just  been  said ; 
whereupon  with  a  supernatural  promptness  he  replied :  "  It's 
precious,  there's  so  little  of  it."  It  may  seem  to  you  that  I  ought  to 
have  been  disabled  by  that,  and  retired  ;  but  no,  I  went  on  just  the 
same,  and  was  helped  rather  than  hindered  by  what  he  had  said. 
There  was  wit  enough  in  that  observation,  and  truth  enough  too,  to 
make  an  end  of  me,  but  dear  me  !  if  you  could  have  seen  his  face 
when  he  spoke.  Such  a  mingled  illumination  of  intelligence,  fun 
and  brotherly  love — it  would  have  made  a  delicious  photograph  in 
your  memory  forever.  At  any  rate  it  did  in  mine.  I  shall  sorrow- 
fully miss  his  first-class  personalities. 


LEONARD  BACON.  445 

It  lies  right  along  side  of  this,  to  say  that  he  had  no  grudges, 
and  no  envies,  and  no  suspicions,  nor  any  other  satanic  attitudes 
towards  other  men.  He  remembered  in  a  way  truly  fearful.  He 
remembered  you,  and  what  you  said,  and  what  you  did  not  say,  and 
the  whole  miserable  or  unmiserable  figure  you  cut  on  this  or  that 
interesting  occasion ; — and  years  afterward,  in  some  circle  or  on 
some  public  occasion  it  might  suddenly  transpire  that  he  had  always 
carried  your  photograph  next  his  heart  • — not  as  intending  to  way- 
lay you  in  some  remote  and  convenient  future,  but  as  having  in  him 
a  memory  constitutionally  unable  to  discharge  anything,  from  the 
landing  of  the  Pilgrims  to  the  latest  joke  ;  and  suddenly,  I  say,  this 
fatal  gift  of  recollection  might  show  itself  in  some  lambent  or  other 
allusion  to  you,  or  your  defect,  like  a  flicker  of  moonlight  around  a 
ruin — but  as  for  any  conceivable  meanness  against  persons,  no  such 
evil  birds  had  any  hiding  in  him  or  ever  could  have.  At  that  point 
he  was  the  noblest  man  I  ever  knew.  To  be  sure,  Jove  among  gods 
is  more  easily  noble  and  indisposed  to  shoulder  and  crowd  his 
brother  and  sister  gods,  because  he  is  Jove,  the  supreme  Olympian 
figure  by  universal  acknowledgment ; — that  is  one  of  the  advantages 
of  greatness.  Still,  how  often  we  see  the  greatest  pothering  in  small 
feelings  as  though  there  were  no  greatness  in  them ;  men  of  genius 
unable  to  discern  any  touch  of  the  admirable  in  anybody  else — men 
of  place  and  power  and  real  worth  just  missing  of  universal  worship 
by  reason  of  some  small  fly  in  their  ointment,  (small  but  powerfully 
diffused)  ;  some  mean  spirit  of  competition,'  some  sensitiveness  to 
personal  affronts,  some  false  tone  in  the  otherwise  perfect  chorus  of 
their  attributes.  The  organization  of  Bacon  was  orchestral  and 
grand,  and  no  string  or  pipe  of  meanness  interpolated  the  blasphemy 
of  its  discord. 

I  have  sometimes  asked  myself  whether  this  nobleness  toward 
his  brother  men  was  mainly  ethical,  or  mainly  sympathetic ;  and  I 
am  not  sure  that  I  can  tell.  Probably  it  was  both.  Dr.  Bacon  on 
his  emotional  side  was  always  more  or  less  inscrutable  to  me.  His 
ethical  side  was  absolutely  unconcealable.  It  stood  in  the  fore-front 
of  his  nature,  high  and  broad  and  massive,  marble-like  and  holy. 
But  as  regards  his  heart  he  was  confusedly  interpreted.  Some  called 
him  cold.  Others  said,  "he  looks  so  but  he  is  not."  I  joined  that 
latter  class.  He  never  gushed.  He  never  seemed  to  appreciate 
gush.  He  would  not  cry.  He  would  not  laugh  if  he  did  not  want 
to.     I  saw  him  one  week-day  evening  in  his  church,  in  the  midst  of 


446  LEONARD  BACON. 

a  multitude  who  wept  and  shouted  for  two  hours  under  one  of  John 
B.  Gough's  old-time  rushes  of  popular  eloquence,  and  the  only  things 
in  the  house  that  neither  wept  nor  smiled  were  Dr.  Bacon  and  the 
marble  pulpit  against  which  he  was  backed.  Long  years  ago  I  heard 
him,  of  a  Sunday  morning,  preach  a  sermon  in  memory  of  his  own 
daughter  who  had  just  died,  and  I,  who  knew  her  not,  could  not 
have  spoken  of  her  with  such  unvarying  calmness  as  did  he.  I  have 
looked  into  his  face  when  I  tried  to  shed  on  him  a  few  bedewings 
from  my  fountains  of  feeling  towards  him ;  and  I  do  not  know  to 
this  day  whether  he  even  heard  what  I  said,  so  placid  was  he.  What 
would  have  happened  had  I  let  out  on  him  my  whole  flood,  I  can- 
not tell.  Nothing,  I  suppose,  excepting,  perhaps,  some  movement 
of  pleasantry,  as  when  Memnon  made  some  reputed  murmur  under 
the  kiss  of  the  morning. 

And  yet  this  man  must  have  had  heart,  else  how  could  he  so 
overwhelm  the  tender  feeling  of  others  as  he  sometimes  did  in  dis- 
course ;  and  how  came  he  to  be  always  so  standing  by  and  bearing 
a  hand  where  the  rights  and  interests  of  men  were  attacked ;  and 
how  is  it  that  such  multitudes  of  us  who  have  been  wounded  by  his 
lance  do  not  feel  wounded ;  and  how  is  it  that  he  was  the  center  of 
such  a  family  love  as  makes  earth  heavenlike ;  and  finally  how  is  it 
that  torpid  persons  like  myself  are  so  thawed  and  ridiculous  when 
his  name  is  mentioned,  and  so  lonesome  forever  now  that  he  has 
gone? 

So  I  should  say  that  his  bearing  towards  men  was  very  largely 
affectional,  albeit  his  phenomenal  self-command  in  all  matters  of 
tenderness  made  him  seem  statue-like.  I  have  sometimes  wished 
that  he  had  been  more  infirm  just  there  ;  but  after  all,  in  a  change- 
ful landscape,  with  its  smiling  and  its  weeping,  the  strength  of  the 
hills  is  no  mean  feature,  and  in  our  moments  of  utter  humanness  and 
brokenness,  how  sweet  it  is  to  commune  with  their  eternal  repose. 

You  notice,  brethren,  that  I  could  easily  wander  all  day  among 
the  characteristic  features  of  Dr.  Bacon,  but  I  must  omit  much  and 
make  haste. 

How  many  things  I  remember ;  things  he  said,  things  he  did, 
things  he  undoubtedly  and  externally  was  and  is. 

He  was  a  stable  theologian  and  yet  most  limber  to  adjust  him- 
self to  all  thought,  and  most  wide-sweeping  in  his  sympathy.  I  came 
out  of  his  church  on  the  day  of  his  funeral,  and  there  up  in  the  air, 
in  the  drizzle  and  gloom  of  the  late  and  rainy  afternoon,  I  heard  the 


LEONARD  BACON.  447 

mingling  of  many  bells.  It  was  fitting,  I  thought,  that  there  should 
be  much  lamentation  over  such  a  man  ;  but  presently  I  noticed 
that  the  lamentation  was  made  up  of  many  kinds.  St.  Paul's  was  in 
it — the  Methodist  bell  was  in  it,  the  college  was  in  it,  and  several 
more  were  in  it,  I  was  told  ; — and  then,  over  all  and  as  it  were 
embosoming  all  in  its  deep  tone,  the  great  civic  bell  in  the  court- 
house tower  sounded  forth  its  mourning — and  I  said  in  my  heart : 
"  It  is  well ;  for  did  he  not  include  ye  all  in  his  love  and  service  ;  a 
Congregationalist,  clear-cut,  debative  and  indefatigable,  and  yet  a 
catholic  Christian  of  the  noblest  mould  ;  a  minister  of  the  gospel, 
devoted  and  laborious,  and  yet  a  distinguished  civilian,  a  man  of 
the  sort  in  whom  courts  have  their  safety  and  their  honor,  munici- 
palities their  health  and  their  renown,  and  governments  their  stead- 
fast anchorage  at  the  throne  of  God."  Thus  spoke  my  heart  within 
me,  while  in  all  the  towers  the  day's  sorrow  was  tolled  and  tolled. 

I  remember  also  his  pulpit  and  platform  rhetoric,  which  fitted 
him  admirably,  mind  and  body.  Such  a  body  as  his  required  such 
a  rhetoric,  sinewy,  affirmative  and  vital.  And  his  mind  required 
such  a  rhetoric,  large-moving,  lucid,  orderly,  grave,  and,  in  passages, 
flushed  with  the  colors  of  noble  sensibility  and  a  cultivated  ideality. 
The  sound  of  him  was  sometimes  dull,  as  he  moved  ;  and  there  were 
those  that  hungered  sometimes  for  more  flush,  and  more  efferves- 
cence, and  more  of  the  lesser  and  more  sophomoric  forms  of  mind- 
play  ;  but  adding  up,  now,  all  his  public  deliverances  that  are  left  in 
print,  and  adding  up  the  still  clear  traditions  of  his  unpremeditated 
utterances,  have-  we  not  a  ponderous  mass  of  powerful  work,  a 
rather  first-class  instance  of  English  undefiled,  English  well  organized, 
and  English  put  to  strenuous  use  always  ?  It  is  good  to  have  such  a 
diction  abroad  to  tame  down  the  froth  of  more  incontinent  men, 
even  as  it  is  good  to  have  the  beautiful  severity  of  Greek  art  to 
chastise  the  lawless  spontaneities  of  souls  overstocked  with  fancy, 
sensibility  and  sentiment. 

The  conversational  vigor,  variety,  vivacity,  and  memory-work 
of  Dr.  Bacon  has  not  failed  to  be  remarked  upon  by  many,  and  I 
can  believe  what  they  say.  Not  many  extended  meanderings  of  talk, 
man  to  man  in  privacy,  did  I  ever  have  with  him ;  only  brief  inter- 
views did  I  catch — not  because  of  inaccessibility  in  him,  I  suppose, 
but  because,  though  often  warned  of  the  peril  of  it,  we  all  incline 
not  to  visit  the  Niagara  which  we  can  visit  any  day;  and  also 
because  we  all  suppress  ourselves  under  the  sophistical  impression 


448  LEONARD  BACON. 

that  our  affairs  are  too  urgent  day  by  day  for  deliberate  visitation. 
The  greatest  of  urgencies  is  that  we  get  contact  with  first-class  and 
contagious  people  ;  and  not  let  Niagara  cease  forever  before  we  reach 
it.  Last  summer  in  Norfolk,  where  he  and  I  were  leisuring  some 
miles  apart,  I  had  a  few  genial  glimpses  of  him — sweet,  sad  glimpses 
they  seem  to  me  now — and  I  noticed  with  much  admiration  his 
undiminished  mind,  his  clear  flow  of  anecdote  and  reminiscence,  his 
likelihood  never  to  lapse  into  any  mustiness  of  old  age,  any  maunder- 
ing, any  substantial  slackening  of  his  life-long,  splendid  sanity.  I  am 
grateful  that  these  cheerful  prognostications  of  mine  were  fulfilled, 
and  that  the  disease  that  slew  him  was  no  mind-muddling  thing,  but 
a  clean,  unlingering  death-stroke,  such  as  was  befiting  for  a  man  who 
all  his  life  had  himself  kept  clear  of  indecisive  and  circuitous  methods. 
While  I  thus  celebrate  his  old  age  I  must  not  forget  to  recall 
his  freedom  to  the  last  from  down-hearted  views  of  himself  as  a 
mortal  man  soon  to  die,  or  of  anybody  else,  or  of  the  world  at  large. 
Death  gets  to  be  an  excessively  large  theme  to  many  old  preachers, 
and  people  all  alive  as  yet  do  not  sit  easily  under  their  continuous 
solemnity ;  but  Leonard  Bacon  escaped  these  unnecessary  rumina- 
tions, was  too  much  alive  and  invincibly  young  to  feel  moved  there- 
to, and  had  the  same  dauntlessness  and  victory  of  life  for  others, 
as  he  looked  at  them,  and  for  the  world.  Some  of  us  have  moods 
of  giving  up,  and  letting  the  world  follow  its  wretched  gravitations 
and  go  astern  to  whatever  destiny  seems  good  to  itself;  and  many 
of  us  are  occasionally  debilitated  by  the  sorrowful  mystery  of  life ; 
we  were  made  so,  I  suppose,  but  Dr.  Bacon  was  not.  He  was  a  very 
serious  man  in  the  main  flow  of  his  nature  and  he  saw  enough  in 
man  and  in  man's  life  on  earth  to  keep  him  attent  and  workful,  but 
he  was  no  man  to  pipe  Jeremiads  ;  partly  because  his  natural  organ- 
ization was  affirmative  and  soldierly,  and  partly  because  he  was  a 
theist  and  a  Christian  to  his  heart's  core,  and  in  the  tumultuation 
of  whatever  chaos  could  distinguish  the  firm  preludings  of  the  pre- 
appointed cosmos — cosmos  for  himself  after,  and  in  spite  of,  the 
approaching  overthrow  and  confusion  of  death,  and  cosmos  for  all 
creation.  To  the  very  morning  he  died,  and  in  all  mornings,  it  was 
in  him  to  say  what  our  poet  has  said  : 

"  Over  the  winter  glacier, 

I  see  the  summer  glow; 

And  through  the  wild-piled  snow-drifts, 

The  warm  rose  buds  below." 


LEONARD  BACON.  449 

It  would  be  interesting  to  me  to  know  how  far  temptation  could 
ever  get  hold  of  Dr.  Bacon — how  far  he  ever  saw  any  glitter  in  the 
bribes  of  life,  any  allurement  in  its  many-phased  fleshliness,  anything 
perilous  to  his  inward  wholeness  in  the  fascinations  of  intellectual- 
ism,  and  so  on.  If  he  was  as  unassailable  as  he  seemed,  it  is  awful 
to  think  of,  that  we  have  had  such  a  man  among  us ;  awful  yet 
exhilarating.  What  a  judge  he  would  have  made  !  How  terrible  his 
moral  and  other  perspicacity,  and  his  relentless  hold  on  the  actual 
momenta  of  things  ; — at  the  same  time  doubtless  what  fatherliness 
(of  the  grave  sort)  ;  and  on  occasion  what  sweet  relaxations  of  the 
absolute  straightforwardness  and  doom  of  justice.  I  glory  in  Dr. 
Bacon  that  the  temptations  of  life  struck  such  a  breakwater  in  his 
person,  and  that  in  his  long  warfare  of  all  sorts  against  slavery  and 
many  other  misdoings,  wherein  he  laid  on  and  spared  not,  no  man, 
however  enraged,  has  been  able  to  impugn  his  character,  or  even 
raise  a  haze  of  doubtfulness  about  his  person.  Full-orbed  and 
solar  shone  he,  in  whatever  attempted  fog — and  now  that  warfare  is 
no  more  for  him,  and  in  silentness  he  lies,  how  distinctly  unblemished 
in  his  renown,  how  serene  and  copious  the  light  he  sheds. 

I  do  not  see  but  a  grave  burden  is  laid  on  the  sons  he  left. 
Whether  they — six  strong — can  perpetuate  the  solitary  force  of  their 
father,  remains — I  will  not  say  doubtful,  but  unsettled.  One  bears 
his  name,  except  that  midway  in  the  grand  old  name  has  been 
inserted  that  of  Woolsey — Leonard  Woolsey  Bacon — against  which 
insertion  I  should  want  to  rebel  were  it  not  that  it  is  just  what  it  is, 
and  was  put  in  there  on  an  impulse  of  love  for  one  who  to  the  last 
was  very  dear  to  Dr.  Bacon.  What  our  remaining  Leonard  will  do 
with  this  two-storied  benediction  I  do  not  quite  know.  If  he  shows 
himself  a  full-sized  Bacon  it  will  be  first-rate  ;  and  if  he  shows  himself 
a  full-sized  Woolsey  it  will  be  first-rate.  And  if  by  some  phenom- 
enal good  fortune  he  should  blend  in  himself  the  outstanding  attri- 
butes of  both,  it  would  be  a  combination  and  coordination  offerees, 
from  which  one's  imagination  draws  back — not  in  terror  exactly,  for 
would  not  the  St.  John  in  Woolsey  diffuse  itself  through  the  Boanerges 
in  Bacon  and  the  Boanerges  in  Bacon  shed  its  vehemence  through 
the  St.  John  in  Woolsey, — not  in  terror  I  say,  but  only  in  amaze- 
ment that  God  should  let  two  such  plenary  personages  flow  together 
in  one  man. 

I  hope  that  some  Bacon  (one  or  more)  will  take  the  place  of 
their  great  sire  in  the  councils  and  assemblies  of  our  communion. 


450  LEONARD  BACON. 

No  man  among  us  contributed  to  these  convocations  such  an  un- 
varying fidelity  of  attendance  as  he,  or  such  a  pronounced  and 
masterly  participation  in  their  affairs.  What  I  shall  do  in  all  future 
meetings,  with  him  away,  I  cannot  yet  see.  My  heart  forbodes 
much  loneliness  and  leanness  and  wistfulness ;  not  as  though  the 
many  dear  brethren  all  about  will  cease  to  be  dear  and  interesting, 
nor  as  though  powerful  men  are  no  longer  possible  to  God  ;  but 
who  will  bring  in  just  that  virile  and  high-flavored  individuality,  to 
which  we  have  become  so  wonted  in  him  : — an  individuality  always 
alert,  always  on  its  legs,  always  with  two  pistols  in  its  belt  and  a  good 
sword  at  its  side  ;  always  spicy  with  quotations  and  personal  allusions 
and  the  resources  of  history;  always  Congregational  by  force  of 
much  thought  on  the  subject  and  a  good  rootage  in  the  Congrega- 
tional old  past ;  always  ready,  too,  to  rise  into  movements  of  devo- 
tion and  lead  us  out  and  up  in  prayers  of  great  reverence,  solidity 
and  fitness ;  where  is  the  living  man  to  perform  this  diversiform 
service  in  our  Israel  ?     So  say  we  all,  I  fancy. 

Well,  the  old  oak  has  gone  down,  and  we  who  sheltered  under 
it  are  out  in  the  open  sun.  I  did  not  know,  until  he  fell,  how  much 
I  had  sheltered  under  him.  His  presence  in  the  state  was  an 
authority.  His  fighting  power  was  a  defence.  His  hale  old  voice 
had  a  comfortable  resound  in  it.  His  long-established  leadership 
made  a  good  rallying  point  when  a  rally  became  necessary. 

But  he  sleeps,  I  say.  God  took  him,  and  he  sleeps  well.  In 
a  certain  spot  in  New  Haven  (a  good  place  and  full  of  historic 
company  for  him)  was  laid  the  visible  Bacon.  The  essential  Bacon 
has  gone  his  unknown  way — plumb  down  and  bottomless  some  wise- 
acres tell  us.  I  turned  over  in  my  mind  their  wisdom,  at  the  Doc- 
tor's funeral ;  and  gave  it  a  good  look.  I  always  knew  it  to  be  a 
melancholy  preposterousness  and  practical  lunacy,  though  lighted, 
here  and  there,  by  a  glint  of  apparent  reason  ;  but  when  I  came  to 
apply  it  to  Dr.  Bacon,  the  shameful  incongruity  and  inconceivable- 
ness  of  it  was  suddenly  revealed.  Annihilation  is  conceivable  in 
connection  with  a  man  who  deserves  it ;  but  for  a  man  full  of  God, 
and  strong- built  in  God,  to  be  blown  out,  is  next  to  saying  that  God 
is  blown  out.  A  logical  issue  from  which  these  men  do  not  shrink, 
to  be  sure  ;  but  we  shrink,  and  mankind  at  large  do.  As  Dr.  Bacon 
lay  there  in  the  aisle  of  his  church  and  the  many  feelings  of  the 
hour  tided  into  us,  .and  by  force  of  the  movings  of  our  better  nature 
we    struck   into   practical   seership  ;  behold,    we  followed  him   in 


LEONARD  BACON.  451 

indubitable  vision  into  his  new  ranges  of  life — not  in  clear  detail, 
but  in  substance ;  our  souls  refused  and  vitally  abhorred  that 
ghastly  non-sequitur  the  extinguishment  forever  of  a  son  of  God ; 
and  we  took  a  new  engagement  of  eternal  life  ourselves,  and  are 
now  on  our  way  into  it — or  rather  we  are  now  in  it,  by  God's 
impartation  of  himself  unto  us ;  and,  by  many  a  token,  we  shall  be 
in  it,  even  by  token  of  these  prophetic  feelings  that  break  into 
us,  on  every  suitable  and  inspiring  occasion. 

It  is  well  to  recall  and  reconsider  Dr.  Bacon  and  make  a  day 
of  memory  over  him,  as  we  have  now  done ;  but  hope  is  more  than 
memory,  in  this  case  as  in  many  others — or  say,  hope  stands  on 
memory,  and  thus  gets  its  off-look — and  some  day,  somewhere,  by 
some  path  of  travel  or  circuit  long  or  short,  we  shall  come  to  this 
man  again,  everyone  of  us,  please  God,  and  resume  what  is  now 
broken  off;  and  have  a  general  meeting,  and  a  general  interflow, 
partly  commemorative  no  doubt,  but  quite  as  much  anticipative ; 
while  on  all  sides  around  us  will  stretch  and  stretch  away — well,  we 
cannot  call  it  June,  and  yet  what  shall  we  call  it,  that  opening  of  the 
eternal  year? 


FOURTH  OF  JULY  ORATION. 


Delivered  at  Hartford,  July  5,  1882. 


The  American  people  for  many  years  now  have  been  subsiding 
from  the  more  vociferous  and  explosive  celebrations  of  this  national 
anniversary.  In  some  communities — city  and  other — they  have 
even  gone  to  the  extreme  length  of  resolutely  ignoring  celebrations, 
and  settling  down  to  absolute  peace,  as  though  the  nation  was 
reaching  that  pitiful  point  of  weary  age  where  the  grasshopper  and 
the  firecracker  are  a  burden.  Still,  I  do  not  understand  that  this  is 
owing  to  any  unyouthfulness  and  dullness  of  old  age  toward  the 
sky-rending  heigh-ho  of  unrestrainable  multitudes,  but  rather  to  that 
law  which  you  see  illustrated  in  married  life.  Two  lovers  pass  out 
of  their  first  vivacity  and  mutual  demonstrativeness  and  general 
state  of  outburst — founded  for  the  most  part  on  instinct — into  a 
reflective  and  calm  contemplation  of  each  other's  excellence  and  an 
intelligent  sense  of  reciprocal  ministries ;  a  condition  of  affairs  that 
seems  tame  and  deplorable  to  inexperienced  beholders,  but  to  us 
who  are  in  it,  seems  all-sufficing  and  somewhat  we  can  easily  hold 
to,  nor  can  do  otherwise  than  hold  to,  while  life  lasts  and  eternity 
endures. 

I  would  not  offend  the  gun-firing  interest  here  present ;  more 
especially  since  I  am  now  about  to  speak  of  this  our  country  in 
a  way  of  admiration  that  will  be  seen,  I  hope,  to  furnish  a  good 
foundation  for  much  Fourth-of-Julyism,  whether  of  noise  and  public 
pomp,  or  the  retired  contemplation  and  silent  gratitude  of  those  so 
inclined.  It  makes  one  shudder  to  think  that,  antecedent  to  1776, 
there  had  been  no  Fourth  of  July,  but  only  a  perpetually  recurrent 
date,  hollow  and  waiting  to  be  filled,  like  the  empty  bucket  of  a 
revolving,  dry  water-wheel.      Days  and   dates  are  astronomically 


FOURTH  OF  JULY  ORATION.  453 

brought  about  and  might  go  on  forever  with  nothing  of  much  avail 
in  them,  even  as  before  men  were  created,  days  and  dates  came 
round  and  round  with  a  beautiful  punctuality  and  sense  of  duty  ;  but 
as  it  seems  good  for  the  dry  wheel  to  catch  up  water  by  and  by,  to 
revolve  thereafter  brim-full  and  dripping,  so  it  is  comfortable  that, 
at  last,  the  race  of  man  being  started,  dry  dates  began  to  be  filled 
with  human  deeds,  as  births,  deaths  and  nameless  hosts  of  doings 
great  and  small. 

It  is  idle  to  deny  that  this  Fourth  of  July,  among  the  rest, 
began  to  be  filled  at  once.  Thus,  at  an  exceedingly  early  day  no 
doubt,  some  person  was  then  born,  then  another,  then  many,  until 
now  on  any  fourth  whatsoever  births  pour  in  in  swarms.  And  no 
man  with  a  heart  in  him  will  claim  that  these  incomings  do  not 
magnify  and  sanctify  and  make  pathetic  that  date  which  from  all 
eternity  had  been  insignificant  and  untender.  But,  my  fellow- 
citizens,  it  takes  more  than  personal  births  or  any  such  to  make  any 
day  and  date  really  supreme  and  overflowing ;  nor  might  the  birth 
of  a  nation  suffice  ;  for  national  births  turn  out  miserable  instances 
of  nothingness  and  vain-forwardness  not  infrequently.  But,  accord- 
ing to  all  known  records,  no  transcendent  thing  chanced  to  come  to 
pass  July  Fourth,  in  the  long  times  of  old  ;  no  imperial  and  universal 
man  came  in ;  no  magnificent  nation  ;  no  solitary  and  never-to-be- 
forgotten  stroke  of  God.  No,  as  though  the  whole  thing  were 
intelligently  pre-determined,  that  one  day  was  kept  clean  and  clear 
for  our  fathers  to  make  their  great  manifesto  in  ;  and  when  the  thou- 
sand of  waiting  years  were  fulfilled,  on  the  exact  click  of  the  clock, 
our  fathers  did  strike  in,  addressing  King  George  and  all  mankind 
in  an  inspiration  which  they  at  the  time  knew  to  be  considerable, 
but  which  the  hundred  and  six  years  since  passed  have  proven  to  be 
complete.  We  often  admire  the  stately  concurrences  of  the  sky,  as 
where  comets  come  back  from  incalculable  wanderings  and  pass 
among  visible  worlds  in  momentary  peril  of  countless  collisions, 
but  withal  in  the  use  of  such  cunning  that  no  clash  occurs ;  but  the 
way  our  sires  seized  that  long-tarrying  date  and  made  it  famous  for- 
ever, was  twice  sublime,  it  being  concurrency  in  the  realm  of  human 
volition  and  dependent  for  its  exactitude  on  millions  of  free  wills, 
first  and  last. 

I  speak  imaginatively,  I  know,  but  I  in  no  wise  over-color  the 
underlying  solid  fact  of  the  providence  of  God  in  all  history ;  to 
shape  the  contour  of  it,  to  be  sure,  but  also  to  manipulate  its  details 


454  FOURTH  OF  JULY  ORATION. 

and  get  them  moving  in  such  manner  as  to  make  that  contour 
perfect  and  possible. 

In  heaven's  eternal  councils  our  national  day  was  fixed ;  in 
heaven's  councils  our  fathers  were  set  in  their  place ;  and  by  the 
time-keeping  instinct  of  Almighty  God  it  was  secured  that  the  men 
and  the  day  coincidently  struck  with  a  resound  that  shall  never 
cease. 

But  it  is  time,  now,  that  I  analyze  this  resound  and  find  what 
is  in  it.  In  other  words,  why  do  you  and  I  so  love  our  country, 
and  so  emphasize  the  day  of  its  birth  ? 

My  first  note  is  that  our  country  insinuates  herself  into  our 
affections,  much  as  everything  else  gets  in ;  covertly  and  by  no 
appeal  to  our  sense  whatever.  When  a  small  duck  makes  for  the 
water,  as  his  first  great  movement  in  life,  it  is  not  because  the  water 
has  approached  him  with  a  well-argued  and  formal  petition  to  draw 
nigh,  which  petition  has  been  elaborately  considered  and  reasoned 
and  consented  to  by  him ;  and  in  like  manner  when  children  rise 
before  light  every  July  Fourth  and  make  all  creation  lively  with  their 
free  noise  over  this  great  country,  it  is  not  at  all  because  they  have 
analytically  explored  that  greatness  and  rationally  settled  in  their 
minds  that  the  greatness  is  great  enough  to  justify  the  noise ;  and 
later  when  the  boy  is  not  unwilling  to  march  out  with  the  regiment 
in  defense  of  the  homeland  in  some  capacity  suited  to  his  littleness, 
it  is  largely  on  the  small  duck  principle  that  he  goes.  Somehow  he 
has  an  instinct  for  it ;  possibly  hereditary — that  is,  his  father  grew 
into  a  great  attachment  to  his  native  land,  and  his  grandfather 
fought  in  the  revolutionary  war,  and  along  the  whole  line  of  his 
sires  there  was  a  strong-blooded  patriotism,  and  he  was  begotten  in 
their  image. 

That  to  begin  with. 

After  that  he  picked  up  his  patriotism  by  contagion  for  a  while. 
He  had  much  contact  with  the  gusto  of  his  elders ;  their  annual 
July  rage,  their  enthusiastic  politics  wherein  once  in  so  long  they 
saved  the  country,  their  national  hymn  singing,  their  commemora- 
tive structures  and  their  patriotic  baptisms  where  the  children  were 
called  George  Washington,  Thomas  Jefferson,  John  Adams,  and 
other  heavy-weight  and  historic  names. 

In  these  unintelligent  and  semi-intelligent  ways  our  first  patri- 
otism gets  into  us  and  makes  its  first  headway.  When  I  call  it 
unintelligent  I  intend  no  disrespect.     We  are  caught  in  numerous 


FOURTH  OF  JULY  ORATION.  455 

unconscious  prepossessions  in  our  young  days,  and  should  shake  in 
the  wind  all  our  lives  if  we  were  not.  That  is  God's  method  of 
getting  steerageway  on  us  as  we  put  out  into  life,  and  making  us  of 
some  vigorous  account.  And  a  man  who  has  a  thoroughly  head- 
strong bias  in  the  great  constitutional  passions  of  his  soul — his 
patriotism,  his  religion,  and  all  that — is  a  much  more  usable  factor 
in  the  world's  affairs  than  the  man  who  leans  all  ways  at  once — so 
well  as  being  twice  as  interesting. 

But  passing  out  from  the  boy-time  with  its  great  instincts  and 
its  fine  sensitiveness  to  contagion,  I  find  that  a  person's  patri- 
otism gets  a  great  lift  from  the  physical  and  social  environment  in 
which  his  life  goes  on — though,  to  tell  truth,  that  sort  of  influence, 
the  influence  of  environment,  begins  even  in  the  boy  time.  I  love 
my  country  because  all  my  personal  experiences  are  associated 
therewith.  I  was  born  in  it — in  a  certain  town  and  on  a  certain 
spot  and  in  a  certain  state — and  as  my  years  go  on  and  I  gradually 
see  the  immensity  of  that  circumstance,  my  birth,  (its  immensity  to 
me,  and  its  soft  appeal  to  my  feelings),  behold  !  this  ever-swelling 
interest  passes  ever  on  to  my  birthplace  and  birth-land.  Any  land 
that  consents  to  have  me  born  in  it,  naturally  has  my  fealty  forever. 
So  we  all  feel. 

Well,  being  born,  I  began  to  move  out  upon  my  native  scenery, 
in  much  exploration.  I  notice  overhead  a  magnificent  sky,  in 
which  all  sorts  of  pomps  and  sweet  vicissitudes  go  on  by  day,  and 
a  much  bespangled  and  fascinating  pomp  goes  on  by  night.  I  lie 
on  my  young  back  and  converse  with  that  infinitude  with  much  un- 
conscious edification  and  much  mysterious  inflooding  of  sky-born 
influences.  I  hear  the  rush  of  rivers  and  the  thunder  of  storms 
that  correspond  to  the  several  greatnesses  and  grandeurs  among 
which  they  rage.  I  wander  in  great  forests,  I  look  up  to  great 
hills,  I  thrill  to  the  sparkle  of  the  morning,  and  silently  tone  down 
to  the  pensiveness  of  the  evening  sky.  I  take  my  map  and  proudly 
note  the  continental  stretch  of  this  my  dear  land;  its  mountain 
forms,  its  sea-like  plains,  its  innumerable  nooks  of  loveliness,  its 
enswathing  oceans,  its  sweep  of  zones  and  climates,  its  vast  and 
lovely  invitation  to  the  whole  family  of  man.  Patriotism  is  a  local- 
ized feeling,  I  say,  and  does  not  even  insist  that  its  native  scenery 
shall  be  in  anywise  notable.  See  the  Hollanders  fight  for  their  tame 
landscapes.  Hear  Charlotte  Bronte  glorify  her  solemn  moorlands. 
Listen  to  Walter  Scott,  while  he  expatiates  on  some  unfascinating 


456  FOURTH  OF  JULY  ORATION. 

patch  of  Scotland,  and  sings  love-songs  to  it,  and  gives  you  to 
understand  that  that  beloved  patch  of  nothing  in  particular  is  the 
long-lost  paradise  of  man. 

But  I  must  not  dwell  too  long  on  scenery,  neither  must  I  dwell 
on  other  personal  experiences  of  ours  which  lend  their  interest  to 
this  the  country  in  which  they  come  to  pass ;  as,  our  homelife  with 
its  tender  and  now  unutterable  to-and-fro ;  our  school-going,  our 
school  fellowships  and  all  the  much  remembered  gladness  and 
pathos  thereof ;  our  out-going  to  begin  life  and  all  the  diffidences 
and  heart-sinkings  and  backward  longing  of  that.  These  things, 
one  and  all,  are  tributaries  to  our  patriotism,  and  could  not  be  at  all 
omitted  in  my  display  of  the  contents  of  that  great  word. 

Again,  I  find  in  our  patriotism  an  element  of  delight  in  the 
historic  record  which  this  nation  has  made.  We  in  these  parts 
are  accustomed  to  trace  back  to  Plymouth  Rock,  and  rather  con- 
ceive the  whole  country  as  disembarked  from  the  Mayflower  one 
wintry  day  some  years  ago.  Well,  from  whatever  disembarking,  on 
whatever  several  shores,  this  very  composite  nation  did  actually 
come,  it  is  good  to  know  that  these  disembarkings  had  great  stores 
of  manly  stuff  in  them,  and  were  likely  to  eventuate  in  a  people, 
not  merely  numerous  (which  were  nothing,  and  worse ;  see  the 
terrific  spawning  power  of  many  low-class  and  unprofitable  creatures 
in  the  animal  ranges  below  man),  but  in  a  population  of  potential 
men  and  women,  among  whom  all  industries  should  thrive,  all  cul- 
ture bloom,  all  divine  faith  have  a  good  hold  and  all  heroism  and 
militancies  spring  forth.  Wars  have  arisen  and  been  mightily 
fought  through  and  ended  by  us,  wars  not  meanly  conceived  in  the 
main  nor  waged  in  a  simply  hell-born  hate.  Our  first  one  wherein 
we  undertook  to  back  the  effrontery  of  our  birth,  has  passed  out 
now  from  the  misconceptions  of  the  period  into  as  serene  and 
shining  a  piece  of  history  as  the  world  ever  saw.  There  it  stands, 
unobliterated  and  bright,  for  the  whole  world's  pious  reading — and 
bent  over  it,  behold  our  old  mother  herself  from  whom  we  broke 
away,  her  British  spectacles  wet  with  the  joy  and  pride  of  her  eyes 
that  children  so  stalwart  should  have  been  born  of  her.  Then  in 
1812  we  insulted  the  dear  old  soul  again  and  she  accepted  the 
lesson  we  gave  her  and  assisted  to  incorporate  it  in  the  public  law 
of  Christendom.  Then  thirty  to  forty  years  later  we  broke  out  into 
what  seemed  to  many  a  partially  unnecessary  swagger  in  the  region 
of  Mexico ;  which  I  touch  lightly,  only  saying  that  if  swaggering 


FOURTH  OF  JULY  ORATION.  457 

be  done,  let  it  be  well  done — as  it  then  was.     And  finally  in  1861 

so  near  that  we  still  hear  the  roll  of  the  drums,  and  still  count  up 
the  endless  unsunken  green  graves,  and  still  mark  the  mourners 
going  about  the  streets — we  took  up  another  task,  the  exact  like  of 
which,  perhaps,  was  never  known;  took  it  up  with  a  mixed 
vehemency  no  doubt  (after  the  manner  of  men),  but  clarified  our 
intelligence  as  we  went  on  in  it,  and  clarified  our  motives,  and  struck 
out  free  and  broad  upon  the  drift  of  God's  providence,  reduplicating 
our  vigor  as  the  stress  grew  heavy,  filling  each  awful  chasm 
as  it  opened  with  our  living  masses  of  men ;  our  southern  brethren 
meanwhile  meeting  us  everywhere  with  a  valor  and  a  fiery  home- 
love  which  won  even  our  admiration,  and  vindicated  the  great  race 
from  which  they  sprung  and  made  us  not  unwilling  on  every  suc- 
ceeding Fourth  of  July  forever  to  mingle  our  songs  with  their  songs 
and  intertwine  our  flags  in  a  common  jubilee.  For  five  years  we 
put  ourselves  to  it,  north  and  south,  in  a  manner  practically  immeas- 
urable in  its  physical  and  economic  outlay,  immeasurable  in  its 
heartbreak,  immeasurable  in  its  unfoldings  of  some  of  the  best  quali- 
ties of  man,  and  immeasurable  (thank  God)  in  the  brilliancy  of  its 
undisputed  issues  and  the  magnitude  of  its  hold  evermore  on  the 
destiny  of  mankind. 

I  select  these  more  outstanding  features  of  our  national  record, 
because  in  a  hurried  celebration  of  what  we  have  done  to  justify 
this  love  which  we  feel  for  .our  native  country,  it  is  only  things  out- 
standing that  I  have  time  to  name ;  and  because  when  a  people  are 
completely  aroused  in  the  passion  and  agony  of  a  great  war,  their 
fundamental  traits  of  all  kinds  get  declared ;  and  whether  they  be 
understocked  in  the  solid  materials  of  character  and  force  and  be 
nobodies,  or  on  the  other  hand  be  men,  is  plainly  and  suddenly 
made  known. 

In  these  struggles  some  great  personages  were  developed  and 
some  names  given  to  universal  fame,  the  mention  of  which  on  this 
platform,  on  this  day  of  public  enthusiasm,  would  be  to  your  feeling 
like  a  discharge  of  artillery,  excepting  that  possibly  I  might 
bewilder  some  of  you  a  little  ;  when  in  the  catholic  feeling  of  this 
great  day  I  came  to  mix  up  such  names  as  Grant,  Sherman  and 
Sheridan  with  such  as  Lee,  Jackson  and  Johnson.  For  my  part  I 
find  that  my  antagonism  to  that  southland  is  less  and  less  personal 
and  more  and  more  a  matter  of  conflicting  ideas. 

But  let  us  enter  upon  no  debates.  We  are  proud  of  our  nation 
3° 


458  FOURTH  OF  JULY  ORATION. 

on  the  martial  field.  We  are  proud  of  our  statesmen,  jurists  and 
legislative  leaders.  We  are  proud  of  our  inventors,  and  our  chiefs 
of  industry.  We  are  proud  of  our  unfolding  literature  and  its 
beloved  names ;  names  sadly  thinned  out  of  late,  but  when  these 
stars  fade  from  our  sky  they  do  not  on  that  account  grow  dark,  but 
on  other  worlds  they  shine — and  even  here,  does  not  the  light  of 
them  still  illume  our  daily  way,  do  not  their  voices  still  make  melody, 
and  when  we  faint  or  are  sad  do  we  not  revive  ourselves  by  them  ? 

I  referred  to  the  ideas  which  the  American  people  have 
espoused,  struggled  for  and  vindicated,  as  a  part  of  the  reason  that 
we  are  able  to  love  our  country  as  we  do.  Those  ideas  are  such  as 
to  make  this  land  the  best  home  on  earth  for  the  millions  of  man- 
kind. The  best  home  on  earth  !  I  have  made  some  runs  in 
countries  over  the  sea,  and  I  find  myself  exceedingly  appreciative 
of  the  historic  accumulations,  and  the  established  and  enriched 
civilizations  to  be  found  there.  Indeed,  my  fellow  travelers  were  in 
constant  fear,  I  believe,  that  this  and  that  allurement  would  take  me 
captive  and  lose  me  to  my  country  forever.  Nevertheless,  I  still 
live  to  say  that  this  is  the  best  place  on  earth  for  all  mankind  to 
assemble  in.  We  have  room  for  them.  We  can  feed  them.  We 
will  let  them  all  vote,  years  before  they  ought  to.  We  will  let  the 
vote  of  a  common  man  go  for  as  much  as  the  vote  of  the  most 
uncommon.  We  will  give  them  equal  laws.  They  may  have  their 
own  religion.  They  may  keep  up  their  old-country  innocent  habits. 
They  may  turn  out  in  processions  of  their  own,  and  make  all  heaven 
ring  with  their  foreign  songs  in  whatever  unpronounceable  tongue 
they  like.  They  may  have  St.  Patrick's  days,  or  anybody's  days. 
They  may  marry  us,  if  they  want  us  and  we  want  them.  And  the 
children  wherewith  we  are  blessed  shall  be  of  any  nationality  they 
please.  Oh  !  it  is  the  freest  kind  of  a  country,  and  they  are  find- 
ing it  out.  The  day  is  near  when  there  will  be  more  Irishmen  here 
than  in  Ireland,  more  Germans  than  in  Germany,  more  Scandinavi- 
ans than  in  Scandinavia,  more  Italians  than  in  Italy,  and  more 
candidates  for  office,  male  and  female,  than  in  all  the  rest  of  the 
world  put  together. 

Of  course  it  is  important  that  these  miscellaneous  contributions 
to  our  national  life  should  be  really  melted  down  into  that  life,  and 
not  remain  in  unreduced  lumps.  What  would  the  ocean  come  to  if 
it  could  not  really  salt  the  millions  of  fresh-water  streams  pouring 
down  into  it.     Perish  the  thought  that  we  Americans  are  the  only 


FOURTH  OF  JULY  ORATION.  459 

known  salt.  But  this  is  the  point ;  we  have  undertaken  over  here 
to  give  the  world  an  original  specimen  of  salt,  and  we  do  not  want 
these  Italians,  French,  Irish,  Germans  and  all  the  rest,  to  be  season- 
ing us  to  death  with  their  kind,  and  thereby  flatting  out  this  last 
great  experiment  of  earth  and  time.  The  Darwinian  idea  is,  what- 
ever can  be  flatted,  let  it  flat ;  and  I  suppose  our  people  must 
accept  this.  All  the  while,  though,  we  have  a  clear  preference  as 
to  who  shall  fiat.  Or  rather,  disentangling  myself  now  from  all 
comparisons,  let  me  say  that  while  we  have  a  considerable  ambition 
to  preserve  a  flavor  of  our  primal  stock,  and  have  ourselves  honored 
by  being  grafted  into  the  stock,  rather  than  have  ourselves  confused 
by  being  grafted  scionwise  into  every  thing  that  comes  along  ;  we 
certainly  are  not  unwilling  to  receive  into  our  sap  and  blood  the 
diverse  piquancies  which  these  foreign  nations  are  willing  to  con- 
tribute. It  always  makes  a  relishable  sensation  in  my  mind,  I 
notice,  to  think  what  a  heterogeneous  lot  of  ancestors  are  repre- 
sented in  my  single  make-up.  It  gives  me  a  feeling  of  plurality 
and  power,  and  of  possibilities  of  infinite  expansion.  Half  of  my 
ancestors  lie  latent  in  me  as  yet,  but  some  day  under  just  the  right 
circumstances  any  one  of  them  may  break  out  in  some  absolutely 
new  forthputting  of  mine ;  or  in  my  posterity,  perhaps,  these  laten- 
cies may  develop.  Well,  the  more  latencies  the  better.  What  is 
the  use  in  being  only  one  man,  when  you  can  just  as  well  be  a  mil- 
lion ?  And  what  is  the  use  of  having  a  nation  monotonously  made 
up  and  all  first  cousins  ?  Nature  abhors  such  a  simple  stock  as 
that ;  and  here  on  this  continent  we  have  laid  out  for  something 
more  composite  and  interesting.  Of  course,  we  have  our  little 
squeamishnesses  about  this  process  of  admixture  ;  and  occasionally 
we  pass  a  Chinese  bill  under  a  flutter  of  apprehension  that  the  Mon- 
golian type  will  prove  too  much  for  us  ;  but  these  coynesses  of  ours 
will  all  pass  away  at  last,  and  we  shall  open  a  western  resort  for  the 
total  race  of  man.  And  when  we  get  them  here,  as  I  said  before, 
we  shall  give  them  the  largest  liberty,  we  shall  defend  them, 
praise  them,  vote  for  them,  and  love  them  ;  but  while  we  are  thus 
sweet  and  have  them  at  close  quarters,  we  shall  energize  upon  them 
tremendously  by  our  free  institutions,  our  usages,  our  school  books, 
our  literature,  our  political  campaigns,  our  churches,  our  Fourths  of 
July,  our  intermarriages,  and  other  like  bewitching  remedies,  until 
we  have  in  these  parts  an  American  man — not  a  foreigner,  nor  a 
Yankee,    exactly,   nor  anything  else  but  a  new  species;    as  Mr. 


400  FOURTH  OF  JULY  ORATION. 

Darwin  would  say,  the  last  evolution  of  a  process  that  began  away 
back  in  some  period  utterly  inchoate,  nebulous,  and  unfathomable. 
I  contemplate  this  upshot  with  a  good  deal  of  hilarity,  you  see, 
and  yet  I  know  that  no  splendid  eventuality  in  the  human  realm 
ever  comes  by  luck,  nor  even  by  the  sole  energy  of  Almighty  God, 
but  rather  by  the  concurrence  and  coefficiency  and  dutiful  strong 
endeavor  of  all  living  forces  ;  just  as  when  the  sea  is  about  to  make 
a  surge  it  calls  on  every  drop  in  all  its  waves  to  push.  This  nation 
has  its  defects  to  be  attended  to,  its  false  laws,  its  false  methods,  its 
pernicious  usages,  and  its  great  sins  to  repent  of.  When  innumer- 
able individualities  are  aggregated  and  called  a  nation,  they  are  not 
necessarily  better  than  they  were  before.  The  one  thing  that  most 
disfigured  us,  as  a  people,  and  made  us  intolerable  to  God  and  man, 
was  not  anywhere  to  be  found  when  the  war  of  the  rebellion  ended. 
Under  the  smoke  of  that  uproar  some  angel  of  God  came  down  and 
set  us  free  of  it.  And  now  what  remains  but  for  every  man  of  us 
to  do  his  public  duty  in  the  most  straightforward  and  God-fearing 
manner  so  long  as  he  has  a  country.  On  a  great  call  we  would  all 
fight  for  her.  Well,  then,  let  us  do  for  her  each  lesser  and  little 
thing  that  comes  in  our  way.  We  are  in  an  unusually  uplifted  state 
of  mind,  I  suppose,  on  this  patriotic  anniversary.  This  is  a  good 
occasion,  therefore,  for  taking  our  freeman's  oath  anew.  Our  flag 
floats  over  us  unchallenged  by  any  power  on  earth.  We  are  fifty 
millions  strong  and  more  coming.  We  are  in  convenient  discon- 
nection from  the  great,  sensitive  and  high-strung  powers  of  the  earth. 
We  have  self-esteem  enough  to  stock  any  three  ordinary  nations. 
We  have  a  language  in  which  a  man  can  say  anything  that  is  fit  to 
be  said.  We  have  under  our  feet  buried  a  line  of  forefathers  as  ro- 
bust and  respectable  as  any  one  could  ask.  We  have  an  unique 
system  of  government,  whose  uniqueness,  though,  has  not  destroyed 
it  yet,  notwithstanding  several  strains  that  made  everything  creak. 
We  have  a  passion  for  popular  education,  and  a  deep  reverence  for 
law.  We  are  family  men,  too,  and  have  the  steadfastness  and 
decency  and  the  strong  ways  of  the  heart,  that  come  of  being  in  a 
genuine  nest  rather  than  all  abroad.  Moreover,  we  have  fair  women 
true,  strong,  and  sweet,  to  hallow  and  keep  the  family.  We  have 
unlimited  deposits  of  wealth  in  our  soil  and  our  deep  earth.  We 
have  great  inland  water-courses  for  the  passage  of  our  vessels  of 
lading  and  of  pleasure.  We  have  almost  all  conceivable  sceneries. 
We  have  hot  days  that  are  first-class,  and  cold  days  that  are  equally 


FOURTH  OF  JULY  ORATION.  461 

vigorous  and  unrestrained  ;  and  cyclones  that  are  the  admiration  of 
the  world.  We  have  a  most  exuberant  and  omniscient  press,  and  yet 
a  press  as  observant  of  the  lines  of  morality,  cleanliness,  common 
courtesy  and  all  Christian  integrity,  I  verily  believe,  as  any  press  on 
earth.  We  are  a  very  composite  people,  as  I  have  already  explained  ; 
and  our  manner  of  government  is  complex,  and  built  up  by  a 
ticklish  balance  of  forces  antithetic ;  and  it  used  to  be  thought  that 
a  people  like  us,  and  so  situated,  might  fly  into  fragments  some  day  ; 
but  the  forces  of  solidarity  have  proved  supreme  thus  far,  and  they 
will,  so  long  as  every  man  of  us  does  as  well  as  he  knows  how — and 
especially  if  our  free  religion  is  permitted  to  have  its  full  diffusion. 
We  have  managed  to  survive  now  over  a  hundred  years,  and  that 
hundred  years  back  there  is  invaluable  to  us  as  a  conservative 
anchor-ground.  It  is  like  a  hold  on  some  shore  while  we  move  out 
into  unknown  seas. 

So  my  fellow-citizens,  my  heart  will  not  let  me  believe  that  this 
good  ship  of  ours  is  to  founder.  Many  sad  things  have  come  to 
pass,  and  that  may,  but  it  will  not.  Let  us  swear  that  it  shall 
not. 

The  words  are  pretty  old  at  last,  so  that  I  might  hesitate  to 
quote  them ;  but  when  I  recollect  that  the  hand  which  wrote  them 
is  dead  now,  so  that  they  are  brought  to  us  afresh  by  the  pathos  of 
death ;  also  when  I  give  myself  up  to  the  natural  emotions  of  this 
jubilant  anniversary,  I  no  longer  hesitate,  but  move  right  on  to  say 
asjDur  dear  poet  better  sung  : — 

"Sail  on,  O  ship  of  state  ! 

Sail  on,  O  Union,  strong  and  great ! 

Humanity  with  all  its  fears, 

With  all  the  hopes  of  future  years, 

Is  hanging  breathless  on  thy  fate. 

We  know  what  master  laid  thy  keel, 

What  workmen  wrought  thy  ribs  of  steel, 

Who  made  each  mast,  and  sail,  and  rope, 

What  anvils  rang,  what  hammers  beat. 

In  what  a  forge  and  what  a  heat, 

Were  shaped  the  anchors  of  thy  hope. 

Fear  not  each  sudden  sound  and  shock, 

'Tis  of  the  wave,  and  not  the  rock; 

Tis  but  the  flapping  of  the  sail 

And  not  a  rent  made  by  the  gale  ! 

In  spite  of  rock  and  tempest's  roar, 

In  spite  of  false  lights  on  the  shore, 


462  FOURTH  OF  JULY  ORATION. 

Sail  on;   nor  fear  to  breast  the  sea ! 
Our  hearts,  our  hopes,  are  all  with  thee, 
Our  hearts,  our  hopes,  our  prayer's,  our  tears, 
Our  faith  triumphant  o'er  our  fears, 
Are  all  with  thee,  are  all  with  thee  !  " 


ESSAYS. 


WORSHIP. 


Read  before  the  Hartford  Liturgical  Club,  Dec.  18,  1878. 


Whatever  human  act,  utterance  or  ceremony  has  in  it  an  inten- 
tional ascription  of  worth  or  worthiness  to  God,  whether  on  account 
of  what  he  in  himself  is,  or  on  account  of  his  works  and  his  promises  ; 
that  act  or  utterance  or  ceremony  is  Worship,  and  has  in  it  the  very 
essence  and  soul  of  worship,  and  carries  in  it  the  precious  efficacies 
of  worship. 

Under  this  definition,  many  things  not  generally  thought  of  as 
worship  are  included ;  and  some  things  quite  commonly  thought  of 
and  talked  of  and  practised  as  worship  are  doubtless  excluded. 

We  are  taught  in  the  Holy  Scriptures  that  servants  are  to  ren- 
der service  as  unto  the  Lord  ;  also  that  subjects  are  to  obey  their 
rulers,  that  children  are  to  honor  their  parents,  that,  wives  are  to 
honor  their  husbands,  that  those  possessed  of  this  world's  goods  are 
to  assist  the  unfortunate,  all  unto  the  Lord ;  and,  in  fact,  that  what- 
soever is  done  in  word  or  deed,  even  down  to  the  commonest  acts, 
is  to  be  done  to  the  glory  of  God.  That  is  the  ideal  life,  the  life 
whereunto  some  attain,  we  believe.  So  then  all  life,  as  being  conse- 
crated to  God  and  his  honor,  may  be  a  worship,  as  truly  so  as  is 
prayer  in  the  Christian  assembly.  So  much  as  that  is  included  in 
worship  in  its  true  definition. 

And  as  to  the  excluded  things,  behold,  all  public  prayings 
which  are  addressed  to  the  congregation  are  decisively  excluded, 
and  all  soliloquizing  prayers ;  also  all  prayers  of  rebuke,  which  are 
pointed  at  absent  sinners,  as  wicked  politicians,  dram-sellers,  per- 
verse theologians,  Turks,  Mormons,  and  disciples  of  wild-fire,  against 
all  of  whom  it  is  right  enough  to  pray,  but  the  praying  in  the  form 
of  it,  and  in  the  aim  of  it  in  the  man's  consciousness,  must  rise 


466  ESSAYS. 

towards  the  Most  High  and  be  spoken  unto  him.  Whereas,  we  all 
know,  that  so  often  as  any  way,  the  man  praying  has  no  up-go  at 
all,  any  more  than  he  has  in  soliloquizing,  but  is  making  an  argu- 
ment or  curse  directly  against  those  pestilent  human  persons,  as 
forgetful  of  God  as  though  there  were  no  God,  and  as  though  he, 
the  man,  had  been  substituted  in  God's  place  with  a  commission  to 
dispense  his  reprimands.  All  these  and  the  like  manward  prayings 
have  no  more  prayer  in  them  than  the  charge  to  the  jury  by  the 
judge  has,  and  they  have  no  worship  in  them  either;  for,  according 
to  my  supposition,  they  are  neither  directed  towards  God,  nor 
towards  man  for  God,  (that  is  in  his  honor),  but  are  purely  human 
movements,  movements  out  of  the  human,  movements  upon  the 
human,  movements  in  a  simply  human  impulse,  whether  of  wrath  or 
self-conceit  or  love  of  approbation  or  some  other. 

All  solitary  choir-singing,  too,  where  the  performance  is  so 
infected  by  a  supreme  art-motive  and  ambition  for  praise,  as  to  be 
addressed  really  to  the  congregation,  is  excluded  from  our  definition 
of  worship,  of  course. 

And  if  the  whole  worshiping  congregation,  in  their  prayers, 
their  songs,  their  ordinances,  are  just  in  the  movement  of  a  formality 
(that  and  no  more) ,  they  being  thoughtless,  or  reverently  listening 
to  the  sound  of  their  own  voices,  or  sailing  about  in  a  pious-seeming 
service,  instead  of  putting  themselves  in  upon  a  prayer-hearing  and 
praise-hearing  God  in  mass,  determinedly  and  with  the  stress  of  real 
feeling, — that  congregation  has  fallen  utterly  out  of  worship,  and  the 
fact  that  their  service  in  the  externals  of  it,  the  wording,  the  kneel- 
ing and  all  the  rest,  points  plainly  out  towards  heaven,  will  no  more 
save  that  people  from  the  displeasure  of  the  Almighty,  than  the  up- 
ward-winging holy  hymns  sung  by  the  aforesaid  unheavenly  quar- 
tette save  them.  If  a  service  in  all  its  appointments  is  formulated 
in  a  true  conception  of  worship  and  the  assembly  take  that  holy 
thing,  holy  in  the  form  of  it,  holy  in  the  origin  of  it,  and  holy  in  the 
inestimable  associations  that  cling  about  it — if  they  take  that  sanc- 
tity and  turn  it  into  a  mockery,  their  act  seems  more  heinous,  than 
if  they  had  gone  before  God  in  the  hollow-hearted  use  of  some 
trumpery  of  their  own  invention,  at  the  moment. 

So  much  by  way  of  definition.  Worship  to  be  worship  must 
terminate  consciously  and  intentionally  on  God,  and  must  be 
designed  to  ascribe  worthiness  to  him. 

Of  course  no  one  can  approach  him  with  that  thought  in  his 


ESSAYS.  467 

heart,  without  being  rilled,  more  or  less,  with  a  sense  of  his  own 
unworthiness ;  and  right  at  that  point,  therefore,  there  slips  into 
worship  inevitably  the  element  of  confession.  And  along  side  of 
that  and  wrapped  up  in  it,  indeed,  is  a  sense  of  want  which  neces- 
sitates entreaty  for  one's  self,  and  so  that  element  slips  in.  And  then 
when,  in  your  worshipful  approach,  you  get  to  recounting  his  worth 
and  his  numberless  worthinesses,  lo  !  it  appears  that  three-quarters 
of  them  have  had  respect  to  other  people  than  yourself  and  it  would 
be  impossible  for  you  to  celebrate  those  worthinesses  without  break- 
ing into  intercession ;  and  thus  there  floods  into  your  worship  that 
great  element — so  that  your  worship  as  you  proceed,  turns  out  a 
complex  thing  •  not  winged  but  many  winged ;  not  a  stream,  but  a 
stream  made  affluent  by  the  inflow  of  mighty  tributaries  and  made 
thrice  urgent  upon  God  also  in  that  way.  So  that  when  we  speak 
of  worship,  although  we  still  cling  strictly  to  our  original  definition 
of  it,  because  that  definition  was  a  precise  and  valid  one,  we 
include  Thanksgiving,  Confession,  Petition  for  our  own  selves;  and 
the  bringing  in  of  offerings  in  God's  honor,  Intercession,  Ordinances  ; 
and  I  shall  handle  the  subject  of  worship  as  thus  rich  in  its  contents. 

And  now,  as  bearing  directly  on  our  subject,  the  public  worship 
of  God  as  a  spiritual  education,  let  me  draw  out  certain  thoughts 
in  their  order,  points  fitted  to  show  that  worship  is  a  spiritual  edu- 
cation, specially  so,  and  in  the  nature  of  the  case  must  be. 

Turning  to  the  Bible,  I  notice  that  God,  directly  upon  the 
fall  of  the  human  race  in  Adam,  provided  and  specified  an 
access  unto  himself  in  animal  sacrifices.  The  first  we  know,  sinful 
men  are  in  that  exercise  and  worship. 

Then  later  and  in  due  time,  God  declared  a  highly  formulated 
ritual,  wherein  nothing  was  left  to  the  wisdom  of  man,  but  all  was 
made  express,  particular  and  minute ;  its  officials,  its  sacrifices,  its 
days,  its  utensils,  its  pomps  and  the  places  and  buildings  whereon 
and  wherein  those  ceremonies  should  go  on, — even  as  it  is  said  in 
the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews,  "Moses  was  admonished  of  God 
when  he  was  about  to  make  the  tabernacle  :  See,  saith  he,  that 
thou  make  all  things  according  to  the  pattern  showed  to  thee  in  the 
mount."  And  if  we  look  back  to  see  what  that  pattern  was  and 
how  far  it  was  detailed,  we  discover  that  the  specifications  thereof 
reached  the  last  jot  and  tittle,  as  though,  in  God's  thought,  the 
matter  of  his  worship  was  one  of  transcendent  moment  and  big  with 
benefit  for  men.     It  is  incredible  that  he  should  have  particularized 


468  ESSAYS. 

and  emphasized  and  solemnly  enjoined  as  he  did,  and  should  have 
sent  his  swift  judgments  on  those  of  his  Israel,  who  departed  in  the 
least  from  that  carefully  appointed  worship,  if  it  was  not  his  design 
that  worship  should  be  a  chief  force  in  the  spiritualization  of  man- 
kind. 

Run  through  the  Bible,  too,  and  observe  how  dear  to  him 
places  and  assemblies  of  worship  evidently  were.  He  actually 
inspired  those  who  were  to  build  the  first  tabernacle  of  Israel,  in  the 
days  of  the  great  Exodus.  He  filled  them,  says  the  record,  "with 
the  Spirit  of  God,  in  wisdom,  in  understanding,  and  in  knowledge, 
and  in  all  manner  of  workmanship  ;  and  to  devise  curious  works,  to 
work  in  gold,  and  silver,  and  in  brass,  and  in  the  cutting  of  stones, 
to  set  them,  and  in  carving  of  wood,  to  make  any  manner  of  cun- 
ning work — to  work  all  manner  of  work,  of  the  engraver,  and  of  the 
embroiderer  in  blue  and  in  purple,  in  scarlet,  and  in  fine  linen,  and 
of  the  weaver,  even  of  them  that  do  any  work." 

And  when  the  tabernacle  was  completed,  lo  !  Jehovah  signified 
his  acceptance  of  it  and  his  delight  in  it  by  appearing  in  a  cloud  and 
covering  it  and  so  filling  it  with  his  glory  that  Moses,  overpowered, 
was  not  able  to  enter  into  it.  And  fire  by  night  and  cloud  by  day 
were  upon  that  Sanctuary,  "in  the  sight  of  all  the  house  of  Israel, 
throughout  all  their  journeys." 

And  similar  mighty  and  thrilling  demonstrations  were  made 
when  Solomon  at  last  built  that  famous  temple  which  was  the  Jew's 
pride  and  the  apple  of  his  eye  at  the  time,  and  has  been  a  memory 
in  his  heart  in  all  the  days  of  his  sorrow  and  exile  since.  When  the 
ark  of  the  covenant  was  taken  unto  its  place  in  that  house,  into  the 
most  holy  place,  even  under  the  wings  of  the  cherubim,  and  the  chief 
priests  and  the  singers  with  cymbals  and  psalteries  and  harps  and 
trumpets  lifted  up  their  voices  together  with  a  loud  noise  and 
praised  the  Lord,  "then,"  says  the  history,  "the  house  was  filled 
with  a  cloud,  even  the  house  of  the  Lord ;  so  that  the  priests  could 
not  stand  to  minister  by  reason  of  the  cloud  ;  for  the  glory  of  the 
Lord  had  filled  the  house  of  God."  And  when  after  that,  Solomon 
had  offered  his  prayer  of  dedication  and  had  ended,  fire  came  down 
from  heaven  and  consumed  the  burnt  offering  and  the  sacrifices, 
and  the  glory  of  the  Lord  filled  the  house  again  and  shone  with 
such  brightness  and  made  such  an  atmosphere  of  the  supernatural 
all  about,  that  the  people  "  bowed  themselves  with  their  faces  to  the 
ground  upon  the  pavement,  and  worshiped  and  praised  the  Lord." 


ESSAYS.  469 

And  we  are  taught  that  the  very  utensils  of  the  temple  were 
also  held  sacred  by  God.  And  when  Uzzah  once  laid  his  hand 
unwarrantably  upon  the  sacred  ark,  "the  anger  of  the  Lord  was 
kindled  against  Uzzah,  and  God  smote  him  there  for  his  error ;  and 
there  he  died  by  the  ark  of  God."  And  when  the  Philistines 
conquered  the  Israelites  in  battle  and  captured  their  ark,  it  was  a 
curse  to  them  and  the  hand  of  the  Lord  was  heavy  upon  them 
until  they  returned  it.  And  we  are  told  in  another  place,  that  the 
eye  and  the  heart  of  God  were  so  upon  his  temple  at  Jerusalem 
and  he  was  so  well  pleased  with  the  assembling  of  all  his  people 
therein,  three  times  in  the  year,  that  he  engaged  with  them  and 
made  his  solemn  promise  to  stand  guard  himself  over  their  property 
and  protect  it,  while  they  left  their  homes  and  from  all  places 
throughout  the  land  went  up  to  Mt.  Zion  and  the  temple. 

And  what  God  was  in  those  times  he  without  doubt  unchangeably 
is  ;  and  throughout  the  whole  Christian  era,  he  has  been  continually 
testifying  of  his  will  touching  sanctuaries  and  assemblies.  Not  in 
overhanging  strange  clouds  and  signals  of  fire,  though  the  day  of 
Pentecost  when  the  Holy  Spirit  so  came  was  not  without  marvels 
like  that ;  but  in  signs,  notwithstanding,  equally  incontestible  and 
quite  as  overpowering  ofttimes.  God's  invisible  presence  and  God's 
unseen  strokes  are  an  habitual  experience  in  all  the  temples  of  the 
world,  wherein  his  true  disciples  do  gather  together.  Which  is  only 
what  we  should  expect  on  the  ground  of  what  our  Saviour  said  : — 
"Where  two  or  three  are  gathered  together  in  my  name  there  am  I 
in  the  midst  of  them."  Ah  yes!  "thy  way,  O  God,  is  in  the 
sanctuary."  "The  Lord  loveth  the  gates  of  Zion  more  than  all  the 
dwellings  of  Jacob." 

And  God's  people  have  always  felt  with  him  that  it  is  the 
dearest  place  on  earth.  David  said,  "how  amiable  (that  is,  how 
beloved)  are  thy  tabernacles,  O  Lord  of  hosts."  "I  was  glad  when 
they  said  unto  me,  Let  us  go  into  the  house  of  the  Lord."  "My 
soul  thirsteth  for  thee,  my  flesh  longeth  for  thee,  in  a  dry  and 
thirsty  land  where  no  water  is,  to  see  thy  power  and  thy  glory,  so 
as  I  have  seen  them  in  the  Sanctuary." 

Speaking  still  of  God's  interest  in  worship  as  though  charged 
with  spiritual  advantages  for  men,  I  recall  the  fact,  that  in  fullness 
of  time  he  designated  a  Mediator,  in  whom  all  preceding  Mediations 
should  have  their  fulfillment ;  he  implying  in  that  act  that  worship 
was  to  be  a  permanent  and  universal  Institute. 


470  ESSAYS. 

I  notice,  too,  that  by  our  Lord,  a  memorial  feast  was  appointed 
as  one  form  in  which  the  people  of  God  forever  might  draw  nigh 
unto  him.  And  as  regards  that  feast,  I  remark,  that  if  we  take  the 
low  and  rationalistic  conception  wherein  it  is  made  to  be  simply 
and  only  a  memorial  before  the  people,  of  the  great  sacrifice  for  the 
sins  of  the  whole  world,  the  entire  force  of  it  being  directed  upon 
the  communicant,  and  he  receiving  it  as  operative  thus  and  no 
otherwise,  so  that  at  first  it  might  seem  that  there  was  no  worship  at 
all  in  the  ceremony ;  yet,  and  even  then,  there  is  somewhat  wor- 
shipful in  it,  for  the  reason  that  the  hearts  of  those  participant  are 
focused  upon  the  divine  and  suffering  Lord  Jesus  in  thankfulness 
and  adoration,  and  upon  him  who  gave  his  only  begotten  Son  for 
our  redemption. 

But  if  we  advance  a  step  and  conceive  the  Holy  Supper  as  also 
a  memorial  presented  before  God,  wherein  it  is  urged  on  him  by 
his  upward  gazing  people,  in  mingled  thanksgiving,  confession  and 
beseeching,  that  Jesus  Christ  bore  our  sins  in  his  own  body  on  the 
tree  ;  then  truly  there  is  worship  in  its  utmost  directness  and  fullness, 
a  worship  all  the  more  complete  because  it  is  assisted,  called  out 
and  borne  up  by  things  visible  and  by  acts  taking  hold  of  the  bodily 
sense. 

But  if  we  go  still  further  and  plant  ourselves  on  the  full  doctrine 
of  the  Real  Presence,  as  held  by  the  extremest  Sacramentarian, 
whatever  vicious  elements  may  thus  be  imparted  into  the  transac- 
tion and  rite,  and  however  the  intention  of  our  Lord  in  it  may  thus 
be  perverted,  I  think  it  cannot  be  denied  that  there  remains  in  it  a 
movement  of  worship  and  a  great  movement  too; -and  I  am  free 
to  say,  that  often  in  the  Roman  Mass,  putting  my  reasonings  and 
preconceptions  behind  my  back  and  falling  in  sympathetically  with 
the  adoring  and  prostrate  people,  I  have  seemed  to  myself  to  be 
commonly  carried  out  towards  God  in  every  worshipful  feeling. 

But  all  theories  aside,  it  is  plain  to  be  seen,  that  in  that  out- 
spread table,  as  set  for  us  by  our  Lord  himself,  and  in  our  necessary 
acts  in  connection  therewith,  we  have  worship  in  one  of  its  most 
concentrated  and  energetic  forms.  And  that  he  should  have 
ordained  that  rite,  is  a  practical  token  of  his  estimate  of  worship  as 
a  means  of  religious  education. 

And  while  I  am  referring  to  various  Institutes,  I  may  just  men- 
tion the  matter  of  offerings,  as  expressly  given  to  us  in  Holy  Writ, 
for  a  worshipful  exercise ;  as  where  it  is  said  that  the  prayers  and 


ESSAYS.  471 

alms  of  Cornelius  had  "come  up  for   a   memorial   before   God." 

Moreover,  in  the  book  of  the  Revelation  of  St.  John,  we  all 
remember  how  Heaven  itself  is  represented  as  a  place  of  assemblies 
and  full-toned,  mighty  worship  ;  a  worship  of  grandeurs  and  majes- 
ties and  multitudes ;  an  inconceivable  choired  movement  about  the 
throne  of  God  and  the  Lamb,  perfect  in  its  holiness,  perfect  in  its 
liberty,  perfect  in  its  joy,  perfect  in  its  concord,  perfect  in  its  equal, 
unremitting  and  everlasting  onflow. 

Now,  gathering  up  these  many  strong  expressions  of  God  him- 
self through  his  Book,  in  respect  of  the  worship  of  him,  I  find  myself 
already  conclusively  settled  in  the  thought  that  worship  by  the 
assembled  church  must  have  in  it  an  amount  of  spiritual  furtherance 
not  easy  to  be  measured.  God  does  not  launch  a  system  of 
machinery,  to  use  a  not  very  pleasant  word,  in  a  manner  so 
explicit  and  impressive,  and  then  all  along  gather  about  it  such 
consummate  diverse  tokens,  thus  reiterating  himself  on  the  subject, 
as  though  it  were  a  main  subject  for  both  him  and  us — he  does  not 
do  all  that,  with  a  view  at  last  and  in  these  days  to  declare  public 
worship  a  small  and  inefficacious  thing,  so  small  as  to  be  quite  out- 
done by  preaching  and  religious  newspapers  and  societies  of  Reform 
and  Bible  classes,  and  staying  home  Sundays  to  read  good  sermons 
and  pray  in  one's  closet. 

There  is  a  great  notion  abroad  in  the  Christian  world,  about 
having  a  profitable  Sunday  at  home,  reading  a  sermon  better  than 
you  could  hear  in  the  church,  and  offering  up  prayers  just  as 
valuable  to  your  soul  as  though  a  thousand  people  were  joined  with 
you  in  it.  On  the  face  of  it  that  notion  is  indefensible,  implying 
as  it  does  that  God  will  put  dishonor  on  his  own  appointments  and 
ordinances,  and  declare  them  futilities.  Moreover,  it  is  a  fact  of 
universal  observation,  that  a  private  worship  which  thus  disparages 
church  worship  always  ends  in  despising  itself,  as  it  logically  ought, 
and  dies  out.  Nothing  is  more  demonstrable,  from  the  facts  of  life 
and  from  the  nature  of  the  case,  than  that  the  private  worship  of 
God  roots  in  the  public  and  has  no  power  to  keep  itself  up  alone. 

My  second  general  thought  touching  our  subject  has  respect 
to  the  great  value  of  self-expression,  whether  in  religion  or  in  things 
secular.  This  value  divides  itself  into  two  particulars.  First,  as  we 
ourselves  are  twofold,  body  and  spirit,  and  as  a  spirit  without  a 
body  would  not  be  a  man,  while  a  body  without  a  spirit  certainly 
would  not,  so  it  is  necessary  that  our  mental  states,  our  thoughts  and 


472  ESSAYS. 

our  feelings,  should  body  themselves  forth  if  they  are  to  amount  to 
much — I  do  not  mean  now,  amount  to  much  as  an  influence  on 
beholders,  but  amount  to  much  in  themselves.  A  thought  unbodied, 
or  an  emotion,  does  not  stand  in  its  entirety ;  it  is  less  than  it  need 
be  and  ought  to  be  less  in  size,  less  as  told  in  consciousness,  less 
distinct,  less  in  our  own  possession  for  use.  After  I  had  received 
a  license  to  preach  and  was  about  to  conduct  my  first  religious  ser- 
vice, I  could  not  recollect  certain  points  in  the  order  of  service  ;  and 
when  suddenly  called  to  baptize  two  children,  my  first  experience 
of  that  kind,  again  I  could  not  recollect,  and  was  driven  out  into 
the  purest  piece  of  extemporization  known  since  the  foundation  of 
the  Christian  Church.  Now  I  had  seen  those  things  gone  through 
with  hundreds  of  times  and  knew  all  about  it,  but  you  see  my 
knowledge  had  never  yet  come  fully  into  my  own  possession, 
because  I  had  not  given  it  a  body  and  put  it  out  into  practice. 
When  once  I  had  made  my  knowledge  an  overt  thing,  I  had  the  use 
of  it ;  it  was  full-born  in  me  and  I  did  not  stumble  any  more. 

So  faith  without  works  (that  is,  not  embodied)  is  dead,  and  no 
more,  whether  for  size  or  useableness,  than  my  knowledge  was. 

And  love  unembodied,  that  is,  not  playing  out  towards  its 
object  in  practical  service  of  some  sort,  is  uncompleted,  not  half 
itself,  and  dwindles. 

And  why  does  not  the  same  law  hold  in  worship  ?  A  worship- 
ful thought,  a  worshipful  feeling,  declared,  put  into  an  ordered  and 
sufficient  round  of  utterance  and  ceremony,  is  continually  greatened, 
continually  strengthened,  continually  approximated  to  its  normal 
and  possible  entirety.  And  a  worship  of  no  sufficient  amplitude,  or 
one-sided  as  dropping  out  half  of  the  truths  of  God,  or  reduced  to 
pure  bareness  for  the  sake  of  spiritual  religion  and  through  fear  that 
the  senses  will  get  the  upperhand — a  worship,  in '  other  words,  that 
refuses  the  pious  soul  a  chance  to  embody  itself,  condemns  that  soul 
to  dwarfishness,  more  or  less,  to  something  akin  to  the  personal 
incompleteness  of  a  human  ghost,  which  ghost,  if  he  could  only  get 
into  a  body,  would  not  merely  be  more  of  a  man,  but  more  also 
in  the  ghost  part  of  him ;  or,  in  other  words  (what  amounts  to  the 
same  thing  in  principle),  faith  without  works  is  dead. 

That,  then,  is  the  first  use  of  worship  as  a  vehicle  of  expression. 
It  gives  the  Christian  soul  a  chance  to  pass  itself  out  into  a  divinely 
appointed  incorporation,  and  thus  grow.  And  an  examination  of 
Christian  history  will  show  that  an  unworshiping  piety,  or  a  half- 


ESSAYS.  473 

worshiping  piety,  has  always  been  full  of  defect,  warp,  unbalance 
and  poverty. 

Then  again,  it  is  to  be  borne  in  mind,  that  faith,  hope,  love, 
contrition  and  godly  desire,  when  once  formulated  in  the  provis- 
ions of  worship,  get  a  very  helpful  reactive  influence  from  those 
formulations  themselves.  If  all  the  evil  in  us,  the  carnal  longings, 
the  plottings,  the  vengeances,  the  unchastened  ambitions,  were  once 
suitably  externalized  so  that  we  could  put  our  eyes  upon  them,  is  it 
not  likely  that  we  should  take  a  sudden  new  sense  of  ourselves  ? 
Certainly  we  should.  And  similarly,  if  our  total  spirituality  is  put 
into  expression  in  hymns  and  prayers  and  chants  and  creeds  and 
sacraments,  will  not  those  externals,  in  their  turn,  play  in  upon  us 
and  we  thus  come  into  a  double  action  of  grace,  into  the  spiritual 
benefit  of  expression,  (even  as  anger  flames  all  the  higher  when 
spoken  out),  and  into  the  spiritual  benefit  of  worship  as  a  thing 
exterior  to  us,  to  be  contemplated  and  received  as  an  impression  at 
its  various  points  of  contact  with  us  ? 

I  pass  now  to  a  third  general  thought  which  I  simply  name 
and  then  leave  it,  though  it  is  one  of  some  importance. 

Inasmuch  as  worship  is  converse  with  God,  it  must  be  that  in 
so  far  as  we  genuinely  and  earnestly  and  often  enter  into  it,  it  will 
assimilate  us  to  his  likeness.  That  is  the  natural  law  of  the  case. 
Which  law  is  phrased  in  current  speech  in  that  saying — "  A  man  is 
known  by  the  company  he  keeps."  Divine  company  makes  divine 
souls.  And  if  we  could  keep  the  whole  world  in  willing,  daily  con- 
verse with  God,  through  worship  or  in  any  way,  it  would  be  straight- 
way a  redeemed  world. 

But  in  addition  to  that  communion  of  worship  with  its  natural 
blessing,  we  have  this  supernatural  effect,  namely : — that  while  wor- 
ship of  one  alone  is  a  sweet  constraint  upon  our  Heavenly  Father, 
the  approach  of  an  assembled  multitude  has  much  more  prevalency 
in  it,  as  was  indicated  by  St.  Paul  when  he  called  upon  the  Corin- 
thians to  pray  for  him,  saying — "we  trust  that  he  (God)  will  yet 
deliver  us,  ye  also  helping  together  by  prayer  for  us,  that  for  the  gift 
bestowed  upon  us  by  the  means  of  many  persons,  thanks  may  be 
given  by  man  on  our  behalf."  And  to  the  Romans  he  said — "  Strive 
together  with  me  in  your  prayers  to  God  for  me,  that  I  may  be 
delivered  from  them  that  do  not  believe,  in  Judea." 

A  critic  full  of  human  wisdom  naturally  makes  a  stand  against 
the  idea  that  the  Most  High  has  respect  unto  numbers  in  that  way 

3i 


474  ESSAYS. 

— and  human  numbers  at  that — but  praying  does  not  grow  cogent 
and  compelling,  according  as  the  prayers  are  multiplied ;  then 
plainly  the  praying  of  the  single  man  all  by  himself  has  no  efficacy. 
If  an  aggregate  mass  of  silver  dollars  is  of  no  more  worth  than  one 
of  those  dollars,  it  must  be  because  all  the  dollars  are  spurious.  If 
they  were  separately  real  silver,  ten  thousand  of  them  together  would 
figure  up  ten  thousand  times  as  much  as  one.  Of  course  spiritual 
influences  cannot  be  mathematically  measured  ;  but  we  may  say  in 
a  general  way,  with  all  Holy  Scripture  to  back  us,  that  the  prayers 
of  the  assembled  church  are  more  than  prayers  private,  because 
God  is  pleased  to  declare  himself,  subject  to  the  stress  of  numbers 
and  vehemencies  even  ;  and  if  it  should  still  be  said  that  a  thousand 
praying  souls  scattered  and  private,  must  be  equal  to  the  same  souls 
assembled  worshipfully  in  the  same  place,  I  reply,  first  of  all,  that 
the  thousands  of  the  Christian  Church  staying  by  themselves,  as  a 
matter  of  fact  do  not  do  the  amount  of  praying  that  they  do  when 
called  into  assemblies ;  and  secondly,  if  they  did,  they  would  not  so 
entirely  agree  as  touching  the  same  things ;  and  thirdly,  by  the 
natural  law  of  the  case,  assemblies  are  immensely  assisted  by  their 
mutual  magnetism,  assisted  in  fervor,  assisted  in  unity,  assisted  in 
clear-cut  vision  of  truth,  assisted  to  a  realistic  hold  on  God  as  the 
necessity  and  joy  of  souls,  assisted,  in  fact,  in  all  that  makes  prayer 
prayer  and  carries  it  home  upon  the  waiting  will  of  God.  Which 
power,  of  action,  by  virtue  of  the  enthusiasm  and  mutual  potency  of 
consenting  numbers,  is  illustrated  in  part  by  the  fact  that  a  body  of 
men  can  march  longer  and  keep  better  heart,  as  striking  the  same 
step  and  swinging  forward  to  the  time-beat  of  music  ;  by  the  fact, 
too,  that  religious  revivals  never  come  to  their  full  and  overwhelming 
sway,  except  in  the  presence  of  multitudes ;  as  I  myself  found 
several  times  in  the  days  of  my  youth,  when  I  particularly  hated  and 
despised  such  movements.  I  was  nearly  laid  out  upon  the  ground, 
despite  all  my  wrath,  by  the  psychological  thunders  of  power  in  a 
thoroughly  unified  and  well-heated  crowd. 

Speaking  of  the  force  of  numbers,  I  ought  here  just  to  add, 
that  when  the  church  gathered  together  lifts  up  her  common  worship, 
the  blessed  dead  pour  in  to  swell  the  movement — at  any  rate  to  all 
sympathetic  and  perceptive  souls  they  do  ;  even  as  once  in  West- 
minster Abbey,  when  the  minister  mounted  the  reading  desk  and 
began  the  lesson,  "Wherefore  seeing  we  are  compassed  about  with 
so  great  a  cloud  of  witnesses,"  I   had  as  distinct  a  sense  of  the 


ESSAYS.  475 

presence  of  the  departed,  (a  host  of  whom  lay  in  silent  death 
about  me)  as  I  had  of  the  living ;  and  those  shadowy  presences 
swarmed  into  the  entire  service,  upheld  the  chants,  emphasized 
the  Amens,  environed  the  preacher,  took  possession  of  the  rever- 
berating spaces  in  the  name  of  the  Unseen ;  and  while  the  little 
company  below,  went  on  with  their  comparatively  feeble  worship, 
added  thereunto  a  heavenly  majesty,  by  force  of  their  innumerable 
host.  I  claim  that  this  is  a  real  element  in  worship,  and  that,  in  so 
far  as  God's  people  come  into  the  great  thought  and  feeling  of  the 
Communion  of  Saints,  they  will  fill  their  solemnities  with  those 
celestial  influences  and  worship  as  reinforced  by  the  whole  King- 
dom of  God. 

Worship  is  a  spiritual  education  of  untold  force,  because  of 
the  great  things  which  are  taken  for  granted  and  acted  upon  in 
it, — the  existence  of  God,  for  example,  and  his  grace  and  providence 
and  our  corresponding  obligation  to  him. 

One  way  to  indoctrinate  people,  is  to  hammer  it  into  them  by 
direct  argumentation,  in  which  case  you  invoke  the  opposition  of 
their  wills  and  their  logicking  faculties  as  likely  as  not,  and  do  not 
succeed  in  your  hammering.  Another  way  is  to  get  them  acting, 
as  though  the  doctrines  and  facts  were  all  right,  as  in  worship. 
Stand  them  up  on  their  feet  to  recite  the  Creeds.  Sweep  them  into 
the  hymns,  as  reluctant  drift-wood  hanging  to  the  river's  banks  is 
taken  along  by  the  freshets.  Bow  their  decorous,  but  not  fully- 
believing,  heads  in  prayer.  Start  them  into  a  drill  of  manifold  action, 
whether  on  principles  of  decorum  and  the  contagion  of  a  crowd  or 
something  else  ;  start  them  in — especially  start  them  so  young  that 
they  but  faintly  know  what  they  are  about,  and  preoccupy  them  for 
God,  even  as  Satan  is  sharp  after  them  for  his  service  ;  thus  gradually 
entangle  them  with  and  in  doctrine,  and  mix  Christianity  in  with 
their  earliest  associations,  so  that  in  after  life,  if  they  want  to  get 
free  and  be  free-thinkers  and  free-livers,  they  shall  find  that  they 
cannot  do  it ;  that  when  they  get  about  so  far,  there  comes  a  tug  on 
their  heart-strings,  a  tug  of  pathos  as  well  as  of  early  conviction. 
These  unpreoccupied  immortals  are  free  plunder  to  the  forces  of 
redemption,  and  while  Catechism  is  good  didactically  put,  Cate- 
chism insinuated  is  better — better  as  I  said,  for  being  less  cross  to 
the  human  grain  and  more  likely  to  reach  to  the  inmost  roots  of  per- 
sonal life ;  better,  as  more  of  the  nature  of  a  soak-in  and  universal 
suffusion,  than  of  an  entrance  by  the  break-down  of  breaching 


476  ESSAYS. 

batteries;    better   too,   as   taking   advantage    of    early  habit   and 
indestructible  personal  and  other  associations. 

In  advocating  this  guile  on  children  and  on  adults,  no  one  I 
hope,  will  understand  me  to  favor  enticing  full-grown  men  into  acts 
of  worship  in  which  they  do  not  at  all  believe, — they  falling  in  be- 
cause multitudes  of  others  do.  No.  But  I  do  maintain  that  where 
a  person's  faith  is  feeble  and  full  of  doubt,  or  where  he  is  clear  at 
some  points  of  faith  and  halting  at  others,  it  is  a  legitimate  piece  of 
business  to  swing  him  into  a  full  orchestra  of  worship  ;  a  worship  I 
mean  of  full  statements  and  full  implications  of  all  needful  doctrine  ; 
the  man  being  induced  to  give  God  and  Christianity  the  benefit  of 
his  doubts.  There  are  several  pipings  in  that  orchestra  that  are  not 
utterly  comfortable  to  him  yet ;  but  inasmuch  as  that  musical  com- 
bination is  really  the  right  thing  and  divine,  put  him  into  it  on  the 
ground  of  what  affinities  he  does  have  already,  and  it  will  surely  be 
educative  upon  him,  and  unconsciously  and  before  he  knows  it,  he 
will  be  in  the  flow  of  the  whole  movement ;  and,  what  is  more,  if  the 
worship  travels  the  entire  circle  of  doctrines,  as  it  ought,  and  ren- 
ders them  in  their  true  balance,  major  things  being  voiced  with  a 
major  accent,  while  things  minor  are  kept  in  their  true  undersong, 
then  our  man  under  process  of  insinuation  as  aforesaid,  is  slid  along 
into  two  most  excellent  advantages — he  is  put  in  possession  of  all 
doctrine  rather  than  a  part,  and  he  is  indoctrinated  proportionally ; 
and  a  Christian  character  thus  developed,  takes  on  a  correspond- 
ing fullness  and  proportion  and  health.  And  in  my  judgment,  these 
results  are  not  practicable  to  the  full,  except  as  the  church  worships 
in  a  service  carefully  prepared  beforehand  and  liturgically,  instead 
of  by  the  solitary  voice  of  an  official.  I  return  to  my  statement 
now,  that  worship  is  a  great  and  peculiar  spiritual  education, 
because  it  puts  us  into  an  ever-repeated  round  of  actings,  wherein 
all  doctrines  and  facts  necessary  to  the  Christian  life  are  assumed. 
Therefore  I  should  name  worship  as  the  best  of  all  antidotes  for 
Atheism,  for  Pantheism,  for  Naturalism,  for  Materialism,  for  Ration- 
alism and  many  more.  Let  a  people  go  before  God  in  unison 
several  times  a  week,  and  be  carried  through  a  circuit  of  acts  and 
utterances  and  grand  uplifts,  wherein  at  every  turn  his  great  name  is 
sounded  forth  by  their  ownselves,  and  there  is  no  use  in  besieging 
them  with  this  and  that  plausibility  to  the  effect  that  there  is  no  God, 
or  that  if  there  be,  he  is  at  best  only  an  unimpersonated  and  unknow- 
able All,  or  "stream  of  tendency  that  makes  for  righteousness." 


ESSAYS.  477 

Also,  let  a  people  spend  several  hours  every  week  beseeching 
God  to  do  thus  and  so,  and  there  is  no  use  in  telling  them  that  he  is 
so  imprisoned  in  natural  law  and  in  the  fearful  grind  of  a  uniformity 
made  up  before  time  began,  that  he  can  give  no  ear  to  the  petitions 
of  his  creatures  ;  and  that  petitions  therefore  are  useless,  Fate  having 
got  in  ahead  of  them  by  several  millions  of  years. 

Also,  let  a  people  be  thoroughly  habituated  to  the  handling  and 
the  actualization  of  spiritual  verities,  in  much  public  worship,  and 
what  use  is  there  in  approaching  them  with  a  theory,  materialism  so 
called,  which  blots  out  in  one  stroke  of  ruin  the  whole  invisible 
realm  of  God.  They  will  not  believe  it.  No — they  will  not  incline 
to  believe  anything  which  logically  undermines  the  reality  of  their 
own  dear  worship  ;  especially  if  they  began  that  worship  when  they 
could  only  lisp  it,  and  have  thus  knit  it  into  their  spiritual  structure 
and  the  very  life  of  their  hearts. 

By  so  much  then  as  all  untruth  is  a  spiritual  hindrance,  by  so 
much  is  worship  a  spiritual  education,  as  being  a  practical  antidote 
and  preventive  to  untruth. 

There  is  one  form  of  error  and  soul-damage  against  which 
worship — worship,  I  mean,  strongly  formulated  and  systematic  and 
enforced  upon  the  attention  by  the  pressure  of  great  authority,  his- 
toric and  other,  as  in  the  chief  liturgies  of  the  church — is  perhaps 
the  only  complete  provision.  I  mean  that  conglomeration  of  high 
heats,  high  visions,  fits  and  starts,  intense  subjectivities,  intuitional 
conceit  and  inward  self-fumblement,  known  as  Mysticism  in  the 
worst  sense  of  that  word. 

In  so  far  as  mysticism  teaches  simply  that  piety  has  an  inward 
phase  to  it,  and  can  be  duly  studied  only  as  we  recognize  those 
interior  aspects ;  and  teaches  the  doctrine  of  a  direct  commerce 
between  man  and  God  in  the  secret  places  of  the  human  soul,  which 
commerce  of  course  implies  more  or  less  inward  vision — and  so  forth 
and  so  forth — I  have  no  quarrel  with  it.  And  no  doubt  it  can  be 
shown  that  the  Christian  church  in  her  recoils  from  mysticism,  has 
sometimes  toppled  clean  over  into  something  worse,  if  possible. 
A  religion  which  has  nothing  at  all  in  it  that  may  properly  be  called 
mysticism,  is  completely  stranded  on  the  shores  of  sense,  has  no 
power  to  conquer  the  world,  and  would  not  do  the  world  much  good 
if  it  did  conquer  it.  But  mysticism,  as  it  has  frequently  developed 
itself  in  history  and  as  it  is  now  present  in  thousands  of  churches, 
sometimes  overtly,  but  as  often  covertly  and  unrecognized  by  the 


478  ESSAYS. 

victims  themselves,  is  something  to  be  greatly  deprecated,  dreaded 
and  planned  against.  The  idea  of  the  paramount  and  infallible 
authority  of  Holy  Writ,  is  a  formidable  antagonist  to  it,  and  all  the 
safeguard  that  half  of  Protestant  Christendom  has.  But  the  other 
half  have  built  over  against  the  danger,  a  heaven-high  bristling  forti- 
fication of  Church  authority  and  a  well-wrought  system  of  holy  exter- 
nalities. 

Well,  I  judge  that  God,  in  those  several  acts  wherein  he 
appointed  public  worship,  and  our  Lord  in  what  he  did  in  the  same 
direction,  partly  in  his  own  person  and  partly  through  his  Apostles 
commissioned  by  him  to  set  all  things  in  order  after  he  had  gone, 
meant  to  put  a  brand  on  all  overdone  and  fanatical  emphasis  on 
interiors  and  practically  forestall  it.  For  various  reasons  it  was  not 
forestalled  completely,  universally  and  forever.  But  in  good  part  it 
was.  And  in  those  appointing  acts  of  God  and  his  Son,  Jesus  Christ, 
and  his  inspired  Apostles,  we  have  the  clue  to  our  mightiest  weapon 
against  a  false  mysticism.  That  is,  let  all  the  people  be  trained  in 
public  worship.  Not  worship  wherein  one  speaking  man  and  func- 
tionary comes  before  God  in  a  highly  individual  out-play  of  his  own 
precious  and  intense  moods  and  tenses,  in  which  out-play  the  wit- 
nessing people  try  to  hang  on ;  not  that,  but  worship-  in  which  the 
soul  and  all  souls  gravitate  outward,  as  they  ought,  being  put 
through  a  sufficiently  express,  full-stated  and  varied  round  of  objec- 
tives, whose  pointings  are  away  from  introversion  and  an  undue 
interest  in  one's  own  mental  states, — a  worship  in  which  all  can  join, 
because  the  peculiarities  of  individuals  and  their  passing  moods, 
are  not  in  it.  A  worship  so  far  projected  into  the  dangerous  region 
of  sense,  that  it  will  powerfully  commend  itself  to  people  in  bodies 
and  endowed  with  eyes  and  ears.  A  worship  which  when  attacked 
as  too  sensuous  and  formal,  can  vindicate  itself  by  Judaism  in  the 
past,  and  Heaven's  revealed  worship  in  the  future,  to  say  nothing  of 
the  general  practice  of  Christendom  in  all  its  ages.  Let  the  Church, 
I  repeat,  have  that  perpetual  schooling,  not  with  a  too  rigid  uniform- 
ity, I  should  say,  but  with  a  good  degree  of  variety  and  an  occasional 
interplay  of  liberty,  even  as  God  himself,  when  he  set  up  his  creation 
and  appointed  her  eternal  order,  reserved  to  himself  the  privilege  of 
an  inroad  now  and  then  and  a  free  stroke,  as  in  miracles.  Give 
us  this  public  service  and  let  us  have  the  whole  world  in  it,  and  the 
spiritual  education  of  man  would  go  forward  in  godly  sobriety — not 
in  jerks  but  with  the  sure  steadiness  of  the  advancing  Spring,  wherein 


ESSAYS.  47!) 

the  countless  buds  are  not  twitched  open,  now  these  now  those, 
with  a  snap  all  around,  but  are  slowly,  silently,  beautifully,  mightily, 
completely  unfolded,  in  the  orderly  push  and  push  of  an  irresistible 
life.  And  with  this  abolition  of  eccentric  and  explosive  spiritual 
experiences,  would  disappear  all  that  distressed  minute  and 
inquisitorial  self-inspection  which  turns  the  Christian  life  of  millions 
into  joylessness,  and  is  as  indefensible  in  the  light  of  psychology  as 
it  is  in  the  light  of  the  Scriptures.  Thomas  Carlyle  makes  sport  of 
what  he  calls  "the  supernatural  chicken  bowels"  of  the  Roman 
Augurs  ;  but  here  in  these  modern  days  are  pious  examinations  next 
door  to  those,  and  with  results  equally  luminous  and  wholesome. 

Perhaps  the  Club  think  I  do  not  speak  of  these  things  with 
sufficient  reverence  ;  and  if  I  do  not,  the  reason  is  I  have  no  great 
reverence  for  them,  though  it  is  certainly  pathetic  that  so  many 
honest  and  strenuous  souls,  being  caught  in  a  snare  and  a  delusion, 
should  so  gloom  their  whole  earthly  life,  and  make  spiritual  health 
an  impossibility. 


LOVE  OF  TRUTH. 


Read  Before  the  Hartford  Monday  Evening  Club,  January  6,  1879. 


Love  of  truth  is  in  all  men,  born  in  them ;  and  with  the  im- 
mense advantage  of  that  beautiful  bias  we  start  out  to  make 
character. 

If  I  be  asked  how  I  know  that  men  are  naturally  thus  endowed, 
I  reply  :  First,  Because  /  am,  and  always  was ;  the  thing  seeming 
to  be  in  me  so  deeply  and  so  inwrought  as  to  indicate  inheritance. 
Secondly,  If  men  were  not  constitutionally  truth-lovers,  it  would  be 
hopeless  to  press  truth  on  their  attention  as  having  a  right  to  be 
received  by  them  and  obeyed.  What  use  is  there  in  addressing 
people  in  a  matter  wherein  you  have  no  purchase  on  them  in  their 
minds.  Thirdly,  The  universal  eagerness  of  men  to  find  out  things 
proves  it.  See  it  in  science.  See  it  in  religion.  See  it  in  explor- 
ing expeditions.  We  are  all  on  a  keen  jump  in  forty  departments 
of  thought,  hunting  up  realities — facts  and  truths — and  never  a  man 
of  us  content  with  make-believes  or  misconceptions.  Hence  pro- 
gress, and  without  this  inward,  inborn  spring,  no  progress  could  be. 

But  of  course,  this  same  creature  (man,  so-called)  has  numbers 
of  other  and  contrary  springs  in  him,  and  out  of  the  lively  war  of 
these  original  impulses  comes  much  confusion, — in  fact,  every  kind 
of  forth-putting  conceivable ;  the  same  person  blowing  hot  and 
cold,  and  traveling  seven  ways  at  the  same  time.  And  I  fancy  it 
may  prove  intellectually  edifying  if  I  proceed  now  to  indicate  a 
few  of  the  principal  evil  forces  whereby  this  instinctive,  blessed  love 
of  truth  in  us,  is  often  headed  off,  and  not  permitted  to  mould  our 
character  and  express  itself  in  our  life. 


ESSAYS.  481 

I  look  upon  this  our  native  instinct  for  truth  as  the  centermost 
and  most  momentous  circumstance  in  our  constitution,  the  one  fea- 
ture around  which  character  most  organizes,  and  around  which  alone 
solid  and  right  character  can  rally.  A  person  who  just  gives  his 
natural  desire  for  truth  full  play,  who  diligently  and  candidly  and 
courageously  looks  into  all  things  in  the  interest  of  that  desire,  who 
calmly  accepts  all  discoveries,  and  resolutely  conforms  his  acts 
thereto — that  person,  and  only  he,  is  a  thoroughly  charactered  and 
full  man.  The  fundamental  question  always,  and  the  only  one  need- 
ing to  be  asked,  in  order  to  the  settlement  of  a  human  being's  case, 
and  the  assignment  to  him  of  his  real  rank  in  the  creation,  is  the 
question  whether  or  not  his  truth-loving,  which  he  cannot  help,  is 
allowed  by  him  to  work  in  its  own  characteristic  way,  and  work  out 
to  the  last  item  its  own  proper  results.  Every  bad  man,  every  one- 
sided man,  every  bigot,  every  tyrant,  every  Pharisee,  every  coward, 
every  malformed  or  mal-administered  person  on  earth,  can  be 
thoroughly  tested  and  shown  up  by  the  application  to  him  of  that 
profound  and  awful  question. 

Well,  let  us  inquire  what  hinders  men  in  this  main  matter. 
Why  do  they  shirk  investigation  ?  Why  do  they  repudiate  the  plain 
results  of  investigation  ?  Why  do  they  not  look  tranquilly  out  upon 
all  things,  with  an  honest  simplicity,  and  receive  all  things  that  are 
able  to  authenticate  themselves,  and  practically  proceed  upon  them  ? 

I  answer  in  the  first  place,  that  any  quantity  of  people  are  afraid 
they  shall  "lose  their  souls,"  as  they  say  it,  if  they  voyage  out  into 
the  open  sea  in  that  venturesome  manner.  Their  idea  is,  that  their 
salvation  depends  on  the  sincere  reception  of  a  certain  tolerably 
complete  round  of  religious  doctrines,  and  they  are  afraid  that  in 
this  open-sea  navigation  they  shall  lose  overboard  some  of  these 
doctrines.  Concerning  this  fear  of  theirs,  I  remark  that  while  there 
is  a  certain  amount  of  plausibility  and  respectability  in  it,  and  a 
certain  conscientiousness,  it  is  sufficiently  answered  by  two  consider- 
ations :  first,  that  a  genuine  truth-seeker  will  be  likely  to  get  hold  of 
and  not  lose  overboard  all  necessary  doctrine  ;  and  secondly,  that 
when  we  come  to  compare  a  good  and  full  hold  on  objective  truth 
as  a  means  of  salvation,  with  a  real  desire  for  all  truth  as  also  a 
means  of  salvation,  behold,  comparison  is  almost  impossible,  so 
superior  is  that  desire  to  objective  accuracy. 

This  is  dangerous  ground  which  I  now  tread,  I  know ;  but  I 
have  threaded  the  matter  out  to  my  own  satisfaction,  and  I  have 


482  ESSAYS. 

settled  for  life  on  the  thought  that  every  possible  salvation  is  secured 
by  us,  when  our  natural  love  of  truth  is  suffered  to  unfold  and  work 
forth  according  to  its  law.  It  will  land  us  in  some  errors,  of  course, 
on  account  of  our  finiteness  and  so  on,  but  it  tends  all  the  while  to 
clear  us  of  errors,  and  whereinsoever  it  fails  for  the  time  being,  the 
errors  will  not  kill  us.  In  my  judgment  nothing  more  needs  to  be 
industriously  hammered  into  all  men,  than  the  moral  necessity  of 
this  one  subjective  soundness. 

Another  hindrance  to  the  desire  for  truth  in  its  natural  out- 
workings,  is  our  dread  of  the  animadversion  and  the  penalties  of 
society.  In  no  country  under  heaven  is  there,  as  yet,  perfect  free- 
dom in  that  regard.  If  you  think  your  honest  thought,  without 
respect  to  anything  except  the  real  seeming  of  things,  and  speak 
your  honest  mind  without  passion  or  conceit  or  obtrusiveness  or 
disputatiousness,  but  only  with  an  unstrained  and  natural  loyalty  to 
truth,  you  will  necessarily  sometimes  run  foul  of  the  conventional, 
and  will  be  considered  more  or  less  objectionable  on  regulation 
occasions,  and  an  unclassifiable  human  specimen.  In  all  of  which 
there  is  so  much  of  discomfort  and  inconvenience,  that  you  will  be 
fearfully  tempted  to  subside  out  of  your  absolute  integrity  into  a 
regulation  specimen  yourself;  and,  unless  you  have  lived  in  integrity 
long  enough  to  know  the  unexampled  sweets  of  it  and  what  a  con- 
sciously saved  and  clean  feeling  it  gives  all  the  while,  you  most 
likely  will  flinch  a  little,  and  be  a  lesser  person  than  you  might. 

Then  there  is  the  almost  more  dreadful  dread  of  theology  and 
the  church  and  the  various  sanctities  confederated  therewith.  The 
line  between  authority  on  the  one  hand,  and  mental  and  spiritual 
freedom  on  the  other,  may  not  be  an  easy  one  to  draw,  but  one 
thing  seems  to  me  plain ;  that  we  must  consider  the  voice  of  the 
church,  in  her  creeds  and  all  the  rest ;  and  the  voice  of  the  Bible, 
and  every  other  authoritative  voice,  we  must  consider  and  decide 
upon  in  a  rugged  and  absolutely  incorruptible  adherency  to  our 
private  and  individual  perception  of  truth.  The  divergence  of  a 
hair's-breadth  from  that  awful  individualism  is  a  profane  abnegation 
of  the  most  radical  and  germinal  of  all  duties,  and  the  beginning 
of  personal  demoralization.  That,  also,  needs  to  be  much  enforced 
everywhere.  And  if  that  view,  although  it  may  seem  to  be  the 
mother-thought  of  all  evil  and  of  universal  chaos,  is  minutely 
studied,  it  will  be  found  to  be  full  of  safeguards.  Practically,  it 
will  often  produce  disorders,   because  whatever  right  thing  men 


ESSAYS.  483 

undertake  to  administer,  they  are  likely  tc  push  out  of  proportion 
sometimes,  but  ideally,  and  as  the  thing  to  be  fulfilled  so  well  as  we 
can,  that  view  is  more  conservative  of  every  interest,  than  any 
other. 

Another  force  that  corrupts  and  enfeebles  our  desire  for  truth, 
is  our  early  indoctrination  in  a  set  of  opinions,  which  are  precious 
to  us,  by  all  the  love  we  feel  for  father  and  mother  and  the  first 
teachers,  and  which  we  are  afraid  will  somehow  receive  damage  if 
we  start  out  with  them  into  the  illimitable  domain  of  free  inquiry. 

And  right  here  comes  in  another  fact, — namely  :  that  we  have 
had  invaluable  experiences  of  the  soul,  which  gathered  themselves 
about,  and  formed  themselves  upon,  certain  views  ;  and  it  is  pretty 
chilly  and  disagreeable  business,  to  imperil  those  views  by  following 
our  love  of  truth  out  into  the  rather  broad  question ;  "  What  is 
truth?" 

Then  there  is  fear  of  inconsistency  with  our  own  selves  to  pre- 
vent a  straightforward  following  out  of  our  impulse  for  truth.  Our 
fear,  too,  that  we  shall  seem  intellectually  conceited  and  rationalistic 
if  we  assent  to  nothing  which  does  not  appear  to  us  true.  In  many 
communities,  moreover,  it  actually  interferes  with  a  man's  business, 
and  cuts  off  his  prospects  in  life,  if  he  conscientiously  follows  his 
own  mind,  thinking  his  own  thought  and  modestly  expressing  it  on 
occasion.  Speaking  of  a  man's  business,  I  do  not  see  how  a  pro- 
fessor of  theology,  in  active  service,  can  really  preserve  his  integrity. 
The  amount  of  yearly  swearing  to  unchangeable  minute  statement 
which  he  is  called  on  to  perform ;  the  forty  thousand  Drummond 
lights  which  are  turned  upon  him  by  the  general  public  to  see 
whether  he  ever  draws  an  unusual  breath,  and  the  instant  loss  of 
students  if  he  does ;  the  necessity  that  the  young  men  under  him 
should  feel  themselves  in  contact  with  a  positively  grounded  and 
almost  omniscient  man,  in  order  that  they  themselves  may  get 
grounded  so  soon  as  possible, — make  up  a  situation  nearly  impossible 
to  be  held,  unless  the  man  in  it  consents  to  a  certain  degree  of 
warp,  and  a  pretty  vigorous  repressal  of  his  God-given  hunger  for 
and  search  after  truth,  in  the  more  exuberant  and  free-moving 
excursions  of  that  search. 

The  minister  of  a  church,  too,  is  subjected,  no  doubt,  to  a 
similar  distress.  If  he  has  sufficient  strength  with  his  people,  he 
can  travel  around  with  a  considerable  liberty  of  mind  ;  but  if  he  is 
weak  in  himself  and  weak  with  them,  he  is  in  a  poor  plight  for 


484  ESSAYS. 

perfectly  unbiased  thought,  and  probably  does  not  attain  unto  it. 
I  would  not  say  that  he  is  deliberately  dishonest.  It  would  be 
cruel  to  apply  so  strong  an  adjective  to  so  weak  a  person  well- 
meaning  and  struggling  with  great  disadvantages.  But  I  am  clear 
upon  it,  that  his  substance  of  character  would  be  more  milk-white 
and  massive,  and  more  a  delight  to  his  own  self  whenever  he  con- 
sidered the  subject,  provided  he  only  could  be  more  in  the  open 
fields  and  had  not  so  many  watch-dogs  after  him. 

So  in  other  pursuits.  Politics  for  instance.  It  is  rather  hard 
for  a  tender-minded  man  and  candidate,  to  tell  exactly  where  he 
stands,  when  his  voters  stand  all  ways. 

And  it  is  hard  for  a  sensitive  and  obliging  man  of  business — a 
retail  trader  say — to  affront  conventionalism  or  that  form  of  religion 
which  happens  to  be  in  vogue  where  he  lives,  or  to  run  the  risk  of 
affronting  them  by  a  warm  and  lively  pursuit  of  truth  as  she  presents 
herself  before  his  own  mind. 

There  are  many  difficulties  in  this  matter,  and  reasons  enough 
in  this  miserable  world,  why  that  love  of  truth  wherewith  we  all  be- 
gin, should  have  a  rough  time  in  forming  our  character  on  its  own 
idea  and  putting  our  life  under  its  law.  "  Out  of  this  place  !"  is 
the  pretty  general  voice  and  outcry  against  these  simple-minded 
obstinates,  who  just  reverently  follow  their  light.  So  if  one  really 
concludes  to  do  that  little,  natural  and  most  obvious  thing,  to-wit : 
to  follow  his  light,  and  not  follow  where,  for  him,  light  is  not, — a 
proceeding  as  obvious,  that  is  as  self-evidently  the  right  thing  as 
that  flowers  should  turn  to  the  sun, — it  amounts  to  a  very  radical 
and  solemn  consideration  and  self-surrender.  It  implies  and  in- 
volves a  spirit  quite  unworldly  and  martyr-like.  And  millions  of 
tolerably  decent  folks  are  not  up  to  it.  Especially  as  they  have  a 
weary  and  half  sad  feeling,  many  of  them,  that  truth,  especially 
religious  truth,  is  not  very  much  to  be  got  at  any  way,  by  such  crea- 
tures as  we  are  ; — no  matter  how  martyr-like  and  struggling  we  may 
be.  There  is  much  debating,  and  a  great  fury  of  yea  and  nay, 
they  say ;  and  the  best  men  and  the  brightest  divide  off  and  take 
different  sides,  and  make  the  salvation  of  us  all  turn  on  their 
specialty;  and  what  is  the  use  of  making  sacrifices  and  losing 
splendid  chances  in  life,  by  the  heroic  pursuit  of  a  very  sweet  crea- 
ture (a  bird,  you  might  call  her,  this  truth)  who  is  also  very  flitting 
and  elusive,  and  fly-away  ?  So  they  talk ;  forgetting  all  the  while 
that  the  inborn  spirit  to  pursue  truth,  and  worship  her,  and  swear 


ESSAYS.  485 

by  her,  is  more  than  the  mere  getting  her,  goes  more  to  make 
character,  and  is  indeed  the  only  organific  energy  and  salvation  in 
a  man. 

But  while  so  many  flinch  for  one  cause  and  another,  and  have 
not  the  root  of  character  in  them,  as  much  as  they  might  have, 
others  many  do  not  flinch ;  and  as  society  and  the  church  more 
and  more  understand  this  great  right  of  free  and  unterrified  think- 
ing and  speaking,  and  the  right  of  each  person  to  evolve  his  life 
and  make  up  his  daily  circumstances  originally  (in  so  far  as  he  does 
not  interfere  with  his  neighbor's  right  to  do  the  same  thing),  then 
we  shall  have  a  great  multiplication  of  truths,  devoted  people,  a 
great  multiplication  of  origina^personalities  and  original  lives.  For 
one,  I  rejoice  in  the  increase  of  that  kind  of  thing.  Undoubtedly 
this  grand  self-assertion  in  behalf  of  which  I  speak,  this  resistance 
of  the  private  man  against  all  attempts  to  force  upon  him  what  does 
not  happen  to  commend  itself  to  his  sincere  perception,  must  be 
attended  with  some  vaporing  and  some  license,  and  some  fanatical 
attempts  at  destructive  overturnings  of  this  and  that.  But  the  gen- 
eral movement  towards  personal  liberty  is  right.  And  in  the 
gigantic  to  and  fro  of  the  movement,  if  some  extremes  are  reached 
occasionally,  I  would  not  be  too  severe  upon  it.  We  clergymen 
not  unfrequently  come  across  sensitive  and  free-ranging  people  who 
will  not  come  into  the  Christian  church,  because  they  are  afraid  their 
rights  as  thinkers  and  discoverers  will  be  abridged  in  there.  And 
I  can  see  just  what  they  mean.  Some  churches  are  a  mean  man- 
trap. They  have  a  minute  creed  which  you  are  called  on  to  accept 
when  you  go  in,  and  your  heart  so  longs  for  church  life  that  you 
swallow  hard  and  take  it  down.  But  by-and-by,  as  you  go  on  with 
your  thinking,  you  find  that  you  have  taken  in  more  of  a  cargo  than 
you  can  be  responsible  for,  and  more  than  you  were  really  aware  of. 
But  how  to  unload — that  is  the  question.  The  minute  you  stir,  the 
minister  is  after  you.  And  if  you  very  visibly  and  notoriously  stir, 
the  whole  machine  is  after  you.  You  meekly  ask  to  be  let  out  of 
that.  You  are  not  a  disturber.  You  do  not  want  to  carry  on  a  de- 
bate within  the  sacred  precincts.  All  you  want  is  to  quietly  leave, 
but  that  is  refused.  There  are  lots  of  ways  into  the  church,  but 
there  is  only  one  way  out  of  it  (they  tell  you) — and  that  is,  to  be 
thrust  out.  They  do  not  so  call  it,  but  they  rise  into  resounding 
six-footed  Latin  and  call  it  excommunication.  Still  it  puts  you  out 
just  as  much  as  though  there  were  no  Latin  about  it.     In  truth  the 


486  ESSAYS. 

Latin  hides  a  very  vigorous  Saxon  procedure.  Now,  I  say,  I  have 
a  degree  of  sympathy  with  these  martyrs  to  the  truth,  or  if  not  to 
the  truth  objectively  considered,  to  the  spirit  of  truth.  The 
church  is  wrong  when  she  thus  violates  the  personal  integrity  of  her 
members  and  practically  seeks  to  debauch  them  at  the  very  seat  of 
their  integrity.  Those  excommunicated  ones  are  conscientiously 
fulfilling  that  which  should  be  the  chief,  if  not  the  only  condition 
of  church  membership.  That  is,  they  are  loving  truth,  and  pursuing 
it,  even  into  the  resolute  enduring  of  public  persecution  for  its 
sake.  No  highest  personal  nobleness  is  possible  except  on  exactly 
their  ground.  And,  if  such  people  are  continually  excluded,  in 
order  that  the  church  may  peaceably  and  piously  wear  the  muzzle 
of  this  or  that  infallibility  (Papal,  or  Protestant  Papal)  by-and-by 
it  will  be  true  that  the  real  kingdom  of  God  is  shifted  out  into  the 
camp  of  the  excommunicants ;  and  the  disciples  of  extreme 
authority  will  be  left  no  practical  function  save  to  inhabit  a  last 
year's  nest,  and  laboriously  strive  to  fructify  its  melancholy  and 
eternal  barrenness. 

It  is  something  to  do  a  man's  heart  good,  that  the  number  of 
Truth's  pledged  men — the  sincere  and  devout  followers  of  their 
own  light,  I  mean — are  visibly  on  the  increase  in  all  free  and 
unpersecuting  lands ;  and  that  even  where  bigotry  and  violence  are 
in  the  ascendant,  there  are  great  mutterings,  and  an  occasional 
square  onset  upon  all  sorts  of  infallibilities  and  their  conceited 
omniscience. 

It  is  something,  too,  for  thanksgiving,  that  this  quiet  resting 
down  on  the  affirmations  of  one's  own  mind,  illumined  by  all  the 
lights  one  can  get  (which  seems  to  me  the  divine  ideal  of  life)  is 
apt  to  vindicate  its  divinity,  as  I  have  already  implied,  by  its  several 
plain  results  in  character.  In  a  world  where  this  personal  freedom 
is  not  quite  liked  by,  perhaps,  the  majority,  the  men  who  practice  it 
are  so  resisted  and  are  forced  into  such  effort  to  keep  it  up,  that 
numbers  of  them  grow  more  eccentric  and  more  ferocious  than  is 
seemly;  and  their  disagreeable  exhibitions  of  themselves  have 
given  an  unsavory  repute  to  the  whole  class  of  independents.  If 
saplings  are  let  alone,  they  gradually  reach  out  into  the  open  sky 
with  a  true  stateliness  and  beauty,  but  if  they  are  interfered  with 
and  piled  upon,  and  are  compelled  to  squirm  about  in  all  directions 
in  order  to  get  out  and  up  at  all,  their  life  is  malformed,  and  they 
are  no  particular  grace  on  the  landscape.     So  these  free-spirited 


ESSAYS.  487 

men.  If  the  manifold  human  popedoms  let  down  on  their  heads 
the  flat  stones  and  what  not,  of  their  bulls  and  syllabuses,  of  course 
some  of  them  in  their  necessary  squirming  and  lifting  under  all  that 
will  cut  a  disagreeable  figure.  But  where  a  man  is  substantial 
enough,  to  move  with  steadiness  through  whatever  oppositions  and 
small  hectorings,  he  makes  one  of  the  finest  objects  in  the  world. 
He  constantly  secretes  character  as  the  oyster  builds  its  pearl,  and 
the  easy  courage  of  him  is  at  last  sublime. 

In  my  first  service  as  a  Christian  minister,  I  one  day  called  on 
a  parishioner  whose  last-born  babe  I  had  not  happened  to  see. 
But  while  I  was  observing  and  admiring  the  child,  I  suddenly 
noticed  that  its  eyes  were  crossed.  Of  course,  it  was  an  improper 
thing  for  me  to  do,  but  I  was  so  arrested  by  the  fact  that,  uncon- 
scious of  anything  else,  I  mentioned  it  with  due  amazement.  The 
mother  was  silent,  but  my  wife,  with  the  customary  thoughtfulness 
and  courtesy  of  this  wicked  world,  denied  it,  and  as  the  deformity 
was  slight  and  variable,  I  was  for  the  moment  bluffed  off  and 
silenced.  But  pretty  soon  those  eyes  were  crossed,  and  I  rallied  on 
it  again.  But  by  profuse  winking  on  the  part  of  my  wife,  and  a 
general  sense  of  something  in  the  air  which  I  did  not  quite  under- 
stand, I  was  brought  into  subjection  once  more.  However,  all 
through  that  call  my  incorruptible  integrity  at  intervals  broke  out. 
There  before  me  was  a  plain  physical  fact,  concerning  which  an 
effort  was  making  to  raise  confusion  as  though  it  were  not  a  fact, 
and  the  iniquity  of  the  proceeding  I  could  not  submit  to.  Since 
that  day  I  have  subsided  into  the  customary  inveracity  of  mankind, 
and  am  not  much  better  than  anybody  else ;  but,  as  Adam  occa- 
sionally reverted  to  the  Eden  he  had  left,  I  often  look  back  to  that 
condition  of  aboriginal  simplicity,  musingly  if  not  mournfully.  In 
that  fine  stupidity  of  mine,  you  will  observe  one  supreme  virtue, 
namely :  that  a  fact,  a  real  thing,  allured  me  as  the  sun  allures  its 
satellites,  and  I  moved  towards  it  with  a  gravitation  and  an  impetus 
absolutely  indivertible,  and  absolutely  inconsiderate  of  prudentials 
and  all  earthly  circumstances.  In  a  well-regulated  man,  prudentials 
are  just  as  real  realities  as  squints  of  vision,  and  should  be  gravitated 
to  on  account  of  said  reality,  and  whoso  is  wont  to  make  indivert- 
able  straight  marches  right  across  them,  in  pursuit  of  whatever  fact 
or  truth,  will  find  that  he  is  stepping  on  live  creatures  with  fangs 
and  a  powerful  snap.  But  I  am  fascinated,  after  all,  with  a  person 
so  unsophisticated  as  to  pursue  truth  or  any  other  reality,  in  an 


488  ESSAYS. 

unconscious  assumption  that  no  other  course  is  either  possible  or 
conceivable.  Once  in  a  while,  in  the  religious  world,  and  in  the 
world  of  philosophical  or  scientific  investigation,  we  come  across 
these  unperverted  aboriginals,  these  souls  that  keep  up  the  simplicity 
of  their  childhood,  looking  into  things  with  a  straight-forward 
boldness  which  they  never  think  of  as  boldness,  and  placidly  speak- 
ing their  minds  as  though  there  were  no  reason  why  they  should  not, 
placidly  acting  out  their  thought  without  apology  or  debate,  as 
though  men  were  in  the  world  for  that  one  purpose  and  no  other, 
and  could  not  be  men  really  and  totally  on  any  other  plan. 


AGNOSTICISM. 


Read  Before  Hartford  Monday  Evening  Club,  November  7, 


Agnosticism  is  no  new  thing,  but  a  very  old  one  rather ;  as  old, 
in  fact,  as  philosophic  thinking ;  which  takes  it  back  several  thou- 
sand years.  There  may  be  some  comfort  in  that,  as  there  certainly 
is  some  discomfort.  I  notice  that  when  I  have  a  pain  which  is 
absolutely  original  in  my  experience,  it  frightens  me.  It  may  not 
be  severe,  but  it  is  so  original.  My  system  has  taken  a  new  depart- 
ure, and  perhaps  I  have  come  to  the  beginning  of  the  end.  So,  if 
Agnosticism  were  a  new  pain,  it  possibly  might  be  a  forerunner  of 
the  final  catastrophe  here, — that  tumult  of  Gog,  Magog  and  Chaos 
to  which  some  theologians  look  forward.  But  it  is  not  new,  I  say. 
Contrariwise,  it  is  the  identical  old  headache  and  heartache  that 
lodged  itself  in  the  human  race  and  began  to  riot,  when  they  began 
to  turn  their  attention  strenuously  and  acutely  to  the  reasons  of 
things.     So  let  us  not  be  too  much  frightened. 

On  the  other  hand,  it  is  distressing  that  this  incubus  holds  on  so. 
Unhorsed  in  one  period  by  some  corps  of  great  thinkers,  it  some- 
how manages  to  get  astride  of  us  again  in  course  of  time,  having 
in  itself  a  curious  amount  of  indestructibility  and  persistence  and 
aggression ;  which  seems  to  point  to  some  fatal  defect  in  human 
nature,  either  intellectual  or  moral  or  both. 

The  course  of  philosophic  thinking,  from  the  beginning  until 
now,  amounts,  on  the  whole,  to  just  a  gigantic  oscillation  of  the 
mind  of  man  between  this  thing  now  called  Agnosticism  at  the  one 
extreme,  and  Idealism  at  the  other ;  with  no  more  ability  to  abide  in 
one  stay  than  have  the  ever-swinging  oceans.  The  path  of  a  horse 
in  a  mill,  round  and  round  forever,  is  not  more  beaten  than  is  the 
track  of  this  philosophic  to  and  fro,  tramped  by  the  great  leaders 

32 


490  ESSAYS. 

of  thought  and  their  innumerable  following.  There  is  a  certain 
uniformity,  however,  in  the  movement  of  the  horse  which  does  not 
hold  in  this  other  and  vaster  and  more  momentous  motion.  It  is 
not  the  exactitude  of  the  pendulum  that  we  have  in  it,  but  rather 
the  eccentricities  of  the  tides,  which,  although  they  manage  to 
reach  their  bounds  at  last,  are  caught  in  numerous  besetments  by  the 
way,  both  earthly  and  astronomic  ;  as,  great  winds,  and  the  occa- 
sional lift  of  a  submarine  earthquake,  and  a  pull  altogether  of  starry 
influences ;  or,  contrariwise,  a  pull  divergently.  Under  the  stress 
of  these  numerous  forces,  the  sea  rolls  in  a  little  early  and  over- 
floodlike,  one  day ;  and  on  another,  a  little  languidly,  perchance  ; 
but  it  is  always  safe  to  wait  for  it — it  will  be  on  time,  and  no 
mistake. 

So  in  the  strugglings  of  the  mind  of  the  world  to  complete  its 
foreordinated  oscillation,  now  into  Agnosticism,  and  now  into  Ideal- 
ism ;  many  interferences  sweep  in  to  retard  or  quicken,  as  the  case 
may  be.  In  a  heavy  march  toward  Agnosticism,  in  a  nation  or  era, 
if  some  Plato  happens  to  be  born,  behold  !  straightway,  a  tremen- 
dous retard  towards  Idealism.  Or,  perhaps  the  stars  will  so  conjunct 
that  a  John  Locke,  or  a  Francis  Bacon,  manages  to  get  in  here, 
whereupon  the  march  slackens  fearfully,  and  Idealism,  it  may  be, 
goes  into  disgrace  for  centuries ;  but,  like  frogs  in  a  solid  rock,  it 
still  lives,  and  in  due  time  comes  forth  simply  rested  for  a  still  more 
energetic  push  on.  So  it  goes  ;  in  the  most  wearisome  see-saw  ever 
heard  of,  if  we  consider  only  the  desirableness  of  getting  really  es- 
tablished in  something  some  day.  And  what  is  notable,  even 
Christianity,  the  most  immeasurable  factor  ever  introduced  among 
this  world's  affairs,  does  not  suffice,  as  yet,  to  make  a  synthesis  of 
those  two  great  extremes  of  thought,  and  bring  the  human  family  to 
the  peace  and  delight  of  a  stable  equilibrium  ;  as  is  evidenced  in 
the  lusty  vigor  of  this  new-born  child ;  this  darling  and  young 
Hercules  of  the  nineteenth  century,  Agnosticism. 

Well  now,  exactly,  what  is  Agnosticism  ?  In  defining  it,  I  will 
use  the  words  whereby  it  has  been  described  in  other  times,  in  order 
that  I  may  identify  the  familiar  old  pain.  It  is  a  form  of  Secular- 
ism ;  a  form  of  Materialism  ;  it  is  a  form  of  Sensualism  (using  the 
word  in  its  historical  meaning,  as  a  term  of  Philosophy)  ;  a  form  of 
Utilitarianism  ;  a  form  of  Positivism — and  I  know  not  what  else 
beside.  But  if  you  take  these  seven  words  and  things  :  Secular- 
ism, Materialism,  Sensualism,  Externalism,  Utilitarianism,  Positiv- 


ESSAYS.  491 

ism,  and  Agnosticism,  it  is  a  fact  that  through  them  all  there  runs 
this  cord  of  unity,  and  this  evil  virus  and  main  feature — namely : — 
they  lay  their  stress  of  thought  on  the  sensible  as  distinguished 
from  the  supersensible  ;  on  the  physical  as  distinguished  from  the 
spiritual ;  on  the  external  and  visible  as  distinguished  from  the 
internal  and  invisible  ;  on  the  temporal  as  distinguished  from  the 
eternal ;  on  the  multifarious  interesting  particulars  enclosed  in  this 
horizon  right  about  us,  as  distinguished  from  the  unhorizoned  im- 
mensities beyond.  All  of  which  characterizations  of  mine  may  be 
well  enough  summed  up,  for  short,  in  the  one  statement  that  these 
various  affiliated  Isms  do  all  take  for  their  theatre  and  their  delight, 
that  realm  of  things,  and  that  only,  which  is  recognizable  by  the 
senses.  I  say,  that  only ;  by  which  I  mean  simply  that  the  drift  of 
these  systems,  the  drift  logical  and  the  drift  actual,  is  that  way ;  and 
the  logical  upshot  of  them  all,  is  the  utter  subversion  of  the  super- 
sensible. Of  course  these  Isms  reveal  themselves  in  all  sorts  of 
degrees,  both  in  single  persons  and  in  nations,  and  in  particular 
periods.  For  instance,  from  John  Locke  to  Comte,  or  from  Bacon 
to  the  subsequent  full-blown  sensualism  of  French  thinking  (with 
its  natural  result,  the  French  Revolution) ,  or  even  to  Mr.  Huxley, 
is  a  considerable  stretch ;  not  much  of  a  stretch  chronologically, 
but  a  large  one  mentally ;  and  yet  nothing  is  more  demonstrable 
than  that  the  philosophy  of  Locke,  and  the  labors  of  Bacon,  led  on  to 
the  strong  sensualistic  system  wherefrom  the  world  has  since  suffered  ; 
partly  because  Locke  and  his  co-laborers  were  incorrect  in  some  of 
their  reasonings,  I  suppose,  and  partly  because  human  nature  is 
what  it  is  ;  to-wit :  a  perverse  thing,  which  can  take  so  wholesome 
a  windfall  as  the  Baconian  method  and  animus,  and  turn  it  into  a 
great  curse.  In  like  manner,  the  Idealism  of  such  a  man  as  Plato, 
being  fastened  upon  by  such  a  man  as  Bishop  Berkeley,  can  be  de- 
veloped and  carried  out  and  misused  until  behold,  we  have  no  mate- 
rial realm  left,  but  are  all  sunk  away  and  merged  in  the  immaterial 
and  ideal.  These  diseases,  I  say,  come  on,  sometimes  strong  and 
sometimes  weak,  but  their  essential  nature  is  the  same  always. 
John  Locke  was  a  philosophic  positivist,  though  in  the  egg  as  yet. 
And  Dr.  Bushnell,  by  his  supreme  intuitionalism,  was  a  latent  and 
potential  Berkeleian.  At  seventy-four  years  of  age,  he  was  taken 
out  and  set  among  the  strong  objectives  of  the  eternal  life,  and, 
therefore,  never  landed  in  the  full  Berkeleian  affirmative  ;  although, 
doubtless,  his   intuitional  habit  kept  on  strong  enough,  and  even 


492  ESSAYS. 

advanced,  approximating  ever  the  direct  and  absolute  vision  of 
God  himself. 

In  the  case  of  Locke  or  Bushnell,  their  peculiarity  did  not  go 
to  the  point  of  personal  damage,  any  more  than  that  transient 
Agnosticism  into  which  even  the  men  of  faith  sometimes  swmg  is 
the  ruin  of  them ;  nevertheless,  Agnosticism  or  any  other  error  is 
unalterably  evil,  and  naturally  pushes  out  into  visible  evil  in  the  long 
run  of  the  generations. 

So  much  as  defining  Agnosticism ;  and  whereinsoever  I  have 
failed  to  make  it  stand  out  in  its  full  character,  I  shall  be  able, 
perhaps,  to  make  all  clear  while  I  go  on,  now,  to  speak  of  some  of 
its  causes. 

But,  before  I  do  that,  I  want  in  a  single  word  and  as  a  matter 
of  justice,  to  distinguish  it  from  Scepticism.  Scepticism  stands  on 
the  outmost  coast  of  the  physical  realm,  and  looking  over  into  the 
meta-physical,  the  super-physical,  the  immaterial,  declares  :  There 
is  nothing  there, — no  God,  no  angels,  no  immaterial  soul  of  man, 
no  personal  immortality  for  man  :  nothing  but  a  shoreless  vacancy. 
Agnosticism,  on  the  other  hand,  takes  position  on  that  same  coast, 
looks  abroad  upon  that  same  outstretched  immensity,  and  with 
voice  more  subdued  and  a  less  bold  face,  says  :  Perhaps — there 
may  be  and  there  may  not  be ;  I  cannot  tell,  and,  as  I  cannot,  I 
will  not  try ;  it  is  irrational  to  affirm  where  you  have  no  solid 
ground  for  affirmation,  and  equally  irrational  to  deny  where  you 
have  no  data  ;  I  take  my  stand  in  absolute  neutrality.  Which  of 
these  two  attitudes  is  best  it  may  be  difficult  to  say.  Agnosticism 
is  the  more  reasonable  of  the  two,  and  perhaps  it  has  this  other 
superiority ;  that  it  is  not  so  easy  to  be  maintained  against  the  push 
of  the  great  instincts  and  yearnings  of  the  soul.  If  you  are  going 
to  stand  in  a  hurricane,  you  must  not  plant  yourself  upright  and  in 
equilibrio,  or  agnostically,  as  you  may  say  ;  but  you  must  be  braced  ; 
and  so,  in  the  sweep  of  the  soul's  fundamental  and  inextinguishable 
longings,  as  towards  God  and  immortality — a  sweep  which  in  our 
moments  of  deepest  thoughtfulness,  and  in  our  moments  of  anguish, 
is  stronger  than  all  the  winds  of  heaven — the  agnostic  neutralism  is 
impracticable,  and  its  disciples  have  the  blessed  advantage,  that 
they  cannot  stand  there,  but  must  topple  over,  now  and  then,  into 
the  mighty  affirmatives  of  faith.  With  the  sceptic  it  is  not  so.  He 
is  braced.  He  has  uttered  his  everlasting  nay,  and  no  rush  of 
emotion,  or  high-swelling  tribulation  can  easily  move  him. 


ESSAYS.  493 

But  notice  this  also,  in  the  comparison  of  the  two  systems  in 
question  : — that  the  forces  which  carry  a  man  into  Agnosticism, 
tend  always  to  bear  him  on  beyond  that,  into  a  thoroughly  affirma- 
tive Scepticism.  Agnosticism  is  a  way-station  on  the  road  to  that 
dreadful  city,  and  half  the  trains  do  not  stop  at  that  station  at  all, 
but  run  express  and  swift. 

But  now,  as  to  the  causes  of  Agnosticism.  It  is  an  endless 
subject,  but  I  will  strike  it  at  a  few  points. 

I  hope  it  will  not  be  considered  merely  the  nonsense  of  a 
Christian  minister,  if  I  suggest  that  the  universal  evil  heart  is  a 
great  help  in  getting  Agnosticism  born  into  any  generation  or  era. 
That  is  always  on  hand.  It  was  one  of  the  sad,  accusing  words  of 
our  Lord,  that  men  love  darkness  rather  than  light  because  their 
deeds  are  evil.  From  which,  let  no  man  conclude  that  every  agnos- 
tic, as  his  first  step  towards  Agnosticism,  deliberately  seated  himself, 
to  plan  how  he  should  reason  God  out  of  the  universe  and  destroy 
the  doctrine  of  free  will  and  responsibility  and  an  immortal  life,  in 
order  that,  having  made  a  clear  field  for  himself,  he  might  proceed 
to  steal  and  murder  as  a  business.  No.  The  agnostics  are  a  gen- 
tlemanly people  in  this  day,  as  a  rule,  and  moral,  and  often  thought- 
ful and  earnest,  and  not  bad  to  live  with.  I  shall  pretty  soon 
mention  the  fact,  that  in  those  historical  instances  where  their  god- 
less and  physical  principles  have  been  carried  to  their  natural  issues 
on  a  large  scale,  so  that  mankind  could  really  see  them  and  under- 
stand them,  they  have  proved  themselves  everything  necessary  to 
make  hell,  just  as  we  might  expect  them  to  :  nevertheless,  not 
every  physicalist,  in  his  thinking,  has  gone  on  to  the  eventualities 
where  he  belongs.  That  is  true.  At  the  same  time,  that  word  of  the 
Lord  is  true  : — Men  love  darkness.  And  this  everlasting,  helpless 
oscillation  of  philosophy  in  all  ages,  to  the  which  I  have  referred, 
is  considerably  attributable  to  that  sad  truth.  If  the  mind  were 
a  thoroughly  straightforward  instrument  of  thought,  we  should 
get  something  settled,  by-and-by.  Of  course,  it  is  a  part  of  our 
finiteness  to  fluctuate,  and  to  land  in  some  places  where  we  had 
better  not  be ;  but  we  should  get  along  with  that  pretty  well,  and 
less  and  less  err,  were  it  not  for  this  constitutional  touch  of  insanity, 
sometimes  called  depravity. 

My  second  observation  on  the  causes  of  Agnosticism  is,  that 
by  our  senses  we  are  related  to  the  material  domain,  so  variously 
and,  in  especial,  so  intimately,  that  many  of  the  best  thinkers  the  world 


494  ESSAYS. 

ever  saw,  and  of  the  honestest  and  cleanest  men,  have  held  that  all 
human  ideas  have  their  start  and  cause  out  in  that  domain,  the 
mind  having  no  power  of  independent  origination  whatever.  That 
was  Locke's  position,  and  it  was  exactly  at  that  point  that  he,  good 
soul,  unconsciously  provided  the  pestiferous  but  exceedingly  plural 
egg,  out  of  which  was  to  be  hatched  that  whole  brood  of  sense- 
bound  Isms  which  I  have  already  mentioned  as  the  twin  sisters  of 
Agnosticism.  Locke  was  the  chief  modern  Apostle  of  that  "  Gospel 
of  dirt,"  at  which  our  now  departed  friend  and  brother,  Thomas 
Carlyle,  occasionally  hurled  his  objurgations ;  albeit  no  man  of 
woman  born  was  less  dirt-like  in  himself  than  that  same  Locke. 
But  he  laid  down  and  elaborated  with  conspicuous  ability  the 
sensational  philosophy. 

And  not  only  are  we  so  related  to  the  world  of  sense  as  to 
have  made  that  philosophy  one  of  the  chief  plausibilities  of  the 
world,  and  an  ever-recurring  form  of  thought ;  but  in  our  infancy, 
before  we  know  anything  in  particular,  the  whole  movement  of  our 
mind  is  outward  and  our  whole  interest  is  there  ;  and  if  we  looked 
simply  at  a  young  child,  we  should  be  compelled  to  say ;  "  Locke 
is  right ;  the  sense-world  is  the  mother  of  every  mental  movement 
we  make."  At  any  rate,  that  world  gets  the  start  with  us  ;  and  the 
first  we  know,  we  are  mortgaged  to  her  ;  and  all  the  thinking  we  do 
then,  or  thereafter  forever,  is  done  in  physical  molds. 

And  this  is  one  of  the  reasons,  I  say,  that  so  many  of  us  turn  out 
agnostics  and  the  like.  We  are  related  to  the  sense-world  ;  that,  at 
first,  is  the  only  world  of  which  we  know ;  we  are  forced  into  sense- 
forms  for  all  our  thinking,  and  our  life,  while  life  lasts,  is  environed 
in  sense  and  most  energetically  addressed  and  stimulated  thereby. 

Then,  too,  if  we  turn  ourselves,  in  the  maturity  of  our  powers, 
to  carefully  consider  the  arguments  for  the  materialistic  view,  we 
find  that  they  make  a  good  show  of  strength.  It  is  most  interesting 
to  observe  the  efforts  of  men  on  that  subject. 

In  old  times,  they  gave  us  Dualism,  which  teaches  an  eternal 
system  of  matter,  and  an  eternal  God ;  two  infinities,  side  by  side. 
Then  again  we  have  Materialism,  which  makes  matter  to  be  the  All, 
and  expunges  God  and  the  spiritual  nature  of  man  and  all  spirits. 
Then,  at  another  time,  we  have  Idealism  pure  and  simple,  which 
makes  Spirit  the  All,  and  wipes  out  Matter.  At  another,  in  sweeps 
Pantheism,  which  expunges  neither  Matter  nor  Spirit,  but  identi- 
fies them  ;  which  is  the  most  curious  performance  of  all. 


ESSAYS.  495 

But  our  business  now  is  with  Materialism  ;  for  that  is  the  pet 
view  of  these  days,  among  sceptical  people. 

And  I  say  that  any  candid  man  must  acknowledge  that  the 
materialistic  theory  has  a  considerable  number  of  fair-seeming  con- 
siderations in  defence  of  itself  to  present.  In  a  fuller  discussion  of 
my  theme,  it  would  be  my  duty  to  recite  those  cogencies. 

But,  fourthly,  Materialism,  (recently  baptized  Agnosticism) 
gets  a  strong  advantage  in  the  well-known  excesses  of  its  eternal 
old  antithesis  and  enemy,  Idealism.  If  some  great  man  sets  up  the 
doctrine  of  Nothing  but  Mind,  and  leaves  us  all  afloat  in  that 
infinite  Impalpable,  it  is  pretty  natural  for  us  to  make  a  desperate 
effort  to  get  solid  ground  again ;  and  after  gasping  in  that  thin  air 
of  the  Ideal  about  so  long,  something  more  solid  is  likely  to  seem 
so  sweet  and  comfortable,  as  to  make  us  foreswear  the  Ideal  alto- 
gether. And  that  is  the  way  it  works,  actually  and  historically. 
The  rebound  from  Idealism  is  Sensationalism. 

And  then  notice  the  thousand  and  one  top-heavy  and  fantastic 
movements,  into  which  Idealism  starts  out.  Mysticism,  and  all 
forms  of  over-subjectivity  in  religion ;  that  is  one  movement. 
Asceticism,  as  a  recoil  from  physicalism,  is  another.  Spiritualism  is 
another.  Superstition  is  another.  The  numerous  phases  of  popu- 
lar spookery,  sometimes  shaping  itself  into  Spiritualism,  and  some- 
times into  something  else,  come  under  the  same  head.  Presenti- 
ments, dreams,  feelings  in  the  bones,  noises  in  the  air,  death-watches 
ticking  in  your  bedstead,  natural  physicians  (Indians,  Grandmoth- 
ers, Aunts,  and  wild-looking  females) — all  these  unverified  and 
unverifiable  and  semi-lunatic  diversions  and  solemnities  of  the 
human  mind,  are  exceedingly  unpleasant  to  the  rationalistic  habit 
of  the  agnostic  and  his  materialistic  brethren,  and  furnish  them 
the  stock  for  a  good  many  really  impressive  observations. 

Of  course,  there  are  often  important  truths  lying  around  some- 
where in  these  various  developments  of  Idealism,  as  in  Mysticism, 
and  Asceticism,  and  Spiritualism  ;  and  I,  therefore,  do  not  wish  to 
speak  of  them  with  more  irreverence  than  they  deserve ;  but 
nobody  can  deny  that  these  outgoes  of  the  Idealistic  principle 
develop  very  flourishing  exaggerations  occasionally ;  and  on  these 
exaggerations,  I  say,  Agnosticism  gets  a  purchase  for  the  spread  of 
its  own  views. 

Again,  you  will  expect  me  to  give  as  one  of  my  explanations  of 
Agnosticism,  the  wonderful  development  of  Natural  Science  in  this 


496  ESSAYS. 

great  Baconian  period.  In  the  old  Greek  day,  where  there  was  a 
Divinity  hidden  in  every  tree,  and  every  movement  of  the  natural 
world  had  a  God  immediately  behind  it  as  its  personal  cause,  the 
study  of  Nature  (especially  so  much  study  as  the  Greek  gave  it) 
could  not  breed  a  rationalistic,  sceptical,  and  physical  habit  of 
mind ;  but  that  old  sense  of  gods  all  about,  and  close  about,  has 
gone ;  and  even  so  late  as  when  Lord  Bacon  was  born,  the  one 
Supreme  Deity  of  the  creation  was  beginning  to  be  pushed  back 
from  his  old-time  immediacy  in  the  operations  of  nature,  by  an 
upspringing  feeling  of  second  causes,  in  the  mind  of  man.  And 
that  feeling  Bacon  nourished  immensely  by  his  introduction  of  the 
experimental  method.  Under  that  method,  the  multiplication  of 
second  causes  has  gone  on  until  now.  Under  that  method,  pro- 
ceeding as  it  does  by  demonstrative  processes,  the  value  of  reason- 
ing on  merely  probable  data  has  been  obscured  ;  and  the  fact  and 
worth  of  Intuition  as  a  mode  of  discovery,  has  been  gradually  lost 
sight  of.  Under  that  method,  there  has  been  an  enormous  addition 
to  the  material  comfort  of  life,  by  all  sorts  of  useful  discoveries  ; 
which  is  another  loud  call  on  the  mind  of  man  to  consider  and  love 
the  visible  and  physical.  Under  that  method,  insisting  as  it  did 
that  nothing  should  be  accepted  save  as  established  by  independent 
and  unbiased  observation,  a  spirit  of  individual  free  inquiry  was 
shed  abroad,  out  of  which  intellectual  pride  and  dogmatism  could 
easily  come.  Let  no  one  undertake  to  deny  the  incalculable  value, 
on  the  whole,  of  the  Baconian  new  departure.  The  way  it  went  in 
among  the  scholasticisms  and  the  laborious  futilities  of  the  previous 
period,  like  a  bomb  shell  in  a  cob-house,  is  beautiful  to  behold  : 
and  the  way  in  which,  since  that  day,  it  has  enlarged  the  boundaries 
of  knowledge,  and  laid  the  foundations  for  a  golden  age,  is  also 
beautiful  as  well  as  amazing ;  but,  meanwhile,  a  good  deal  of  vapor- 
ing has  occurred,  a  good  many  highly  materialistic  Isms  have 
sprung  up,  and  a  good  many  assaults  have  been  made  on  that 
blessed  Religion  which  Bacon  revered  (but  did  not  always  prac- 
tice) ;  until  we  are  in  the  condition  of  a  sick  man  who  has  taken 
into  his  system  a  powerful  medicine,  and  is  on  that  account  surely 
on  his  way  to  health,  but  is  fearfully  griped  by  it,  notwithstanding. 
It  is  no  fault  of  Bacon,  or  of  Natural  Science,  that  we  are  in 
just  this ;  and  I  sometimes  feel  almost  like  pardoning  all  the  rest  of 
us,  that  we  have  suffered  the  new  era  to  drift  our  thinking  into  such 
agnostical  ways  ;  because  the  drift  is  so  strong,  and  because  there  is 


ESSAYS.  497 

such  innocency  of  aspect  in  the  causes  that  have  carried  us  along ; 
although,  of  course,  I  know  that,  while  we  were  indulging  ourselves 
in  the  fascinations  of  natural  study,  and  natural  discovery,  we 
should  have  kept  up  the  ideal  and  supersensible  side  of  things,  by 
prayer  and  holy  living,  and  a  tender  respect  for  the  inner  Light,  and 
a  thorough-going  study  of  the  validity  of  the  intuitional  method. 

Which  reminds  me  to  say  that  Agnosticism  is,  without  doubt,  in 
large  part,  a  recoil  from  the  principle  of  Authority,  as  embodied  in 
the  truly  despotic  doctrine  of  the  Mediaeval  Church ; — to  say 
nothing  of  other  and  less  formidable  embodiments  of  it. 

And  while  I  am  upon  the  Church,  let  me  add,  that  such  good 
people  as  Jonathan  Edwards,  and  all  high  and  excessive  Calvinists, 
are  unwitting  helpers  of  Agnosticism ;  and  make  it  possible ;  and 
this  in  several  ways.  In  the  first  place,  they  set  up  a  God,  who  not 
merely  never  was,  but  never  deserved  to  be  ;  a  God  which  the 
human  race  will  not  bear  more  than  so  long ;  a  God  which  makes 
it  important  to  show  that  the  material  universe  is  the  only  thing  we 
have  to  dread,  and  that  this  life  in  the  body  does  not  eventuate  in  a 
Beyond  suffused  by  that  same  divine  presence. 

In  the  second  place,  Edwards  and  his  kind,  by  their  tremen- 
dous demonstration  of  the  helpless  bondage  of  the  human  will,  in  all 
its  acts,  under  the  push  of  efficient  causes  ;  have  established  for  us 
a  fatalism  as  fatal  as  the  mechanical  fatalism  of  the  materialist  who 
holds  that  the  mind  is  a  purely  physical  thing,  and  therefore  moves 
evermore  under  the  compulsion  of  physical  causes.  Who  cares 
whether  Edwards  compels  him,  or  the  mechanicalist  and  atheist, 
Mr.  Holyoake ;  he  is  compelled,  from  whomever,  and  Edwards  and 
Holyoake  are  yoked  up  together  to  do  it  for  him.  I  do  not  say 
that  Edwards  had  not  some  views  which  saved  his  fatalism  from  its 
full  effect  on  mankind,  but  I  do  say  that,  in  millions  of  cases,  his 
brainy  demonstrations  about  the  will  of  man,  and  the  decrees  of 
God,  have  assisted  the  physical  philosophers  in  their  materialistic 
doctrine  of  necessity. 

I  conclude  my  exposition  of  the  causes  of  Agnosticism,  by 
remarking  that  there  is  a  bewitching  humble-minded  look  in  it, 
which  might  easily  lead  one  to  believe  that  Humility  is  its  one  and 
only  mother ;  as  where  Renan  calls  this  attitude  :  "  the  effect  of  a 
profound  piety  trembling  lest  it  blaspheme."  Its  advocates  claim, 
in  their  writings,  that  theirs  is  the  only  truly  modest  position,  as 
respects  the  transcendental  and  spiritual  parts  of  the  universe.     And 


498  ESSAYS. 

I  fancy  that  every  deeply  meditative  and  candid  mind  has  moments, 
when  it  does  seem  the  humblest  thing  not  to  be  very  affirmative. 
And  many  of  us  who  are  not  very  profound  feel  so.  For  my  part  I 
always  feel  so,  when  I  meet  those  omniscient  persons  who  infest  the 
church  and  infest  theology  and  infest  life.  When  some  clear-cut 
Trinitarian  takes  me  in  tow  for  a  voyage  back  into  the  psychologi- 
cal recesses  of  the  nature  of  God,  and  once  there,  gets  out  his 
instruments  and  triangulates  the  whole  region,  and  then  calls  on  me 
to  sign  my  name  to  it,  and  seems  thunderstruck  if  I  hesitate,  I  think 
that  Nescience  is  the  best  invention  whereof  I  have  heard.  And 
there  are  numbers  of  more  accessible  regions  than  that,  into  which 
we  get  invited  where  Nescience  is  a  perfect  comfort. 

Moreover,  one  has  sorrowful  moments,  moments  of  bereave- 
ment, moments  of  moral  discomfiture,  moments  of  an  awfully  dis- 
tinct sense  of  one's  own  mental  limitations,  moments,  therefore, 
when  the  soul  instinctively  cries  out  for  a  much  more  than  common 
assurance  that  there  is  a  God,  and  a  good  God,  and  a  helping  God, 
and  a  future  for  men,  and  a  Spiritual  Kingdom  all  around ;  and  at 
those  times,  in  lack  of  just  the  demonstrations  which  we  crave,  and 
in  the  nature  of  things  cannot  have,  it  is  easy  to  pass  into  the  infinite 
nebulosity  and  incertitude  of  Agnosticism,  and  to  feel  that  anything 
more  affirmative  than  this  is  a  little  venturesome,  not  to  say  dogmatic 
and  immodest. 

As  I  am  simply  giving  the  causes  of  Agnosticism,  I  will  not 
argue  whether  such  an  attitude  and  feeling  actually  do  spring  from  a 
specially  humble  state  of  mind,  any  farther  than  to  say,  that  under- 
neath this  alleged  humility,  lies  all  the  while  the  vicious  assumption 
that  transcendental  and  spiritual  things  are  not  clearly  discoverable  ; 
which  is  the  very  point  in  dispute  between  Agnosticism  and  faith. 
We  who  hold  to  the  actuality  of  the  Spiritual,  do  most  energetically 
and  clamorously  affirm  that  God  is  triumphantly  discoverable,  as 
much  so  as  his  physical  creation ;  that  the  mind  of  man,  and  its 
spirituality,  is  also  discoverable,  as  much  so  as  his  body ;  that 
man's  immortality  as  a  personal  unit  is  verifiable,  not  by  a  scientific 
— that  is  by  a  demonstrative — process,  but  by  the  method  of  moral 
reasoning,  which  moral  method  rests  at  last  on  inevitable  intuitions, 
just  as  does  the  demonstrative  method.  And  for  the  agnostic  to 
start  up  with  the  idea  that  he  is  the  humblest  creature  on  earthy 
because  he  declines  to  rest  his  faith  on  the  verities  unseen,  is  to  beg 
the  question  between  him  and  the  rest  of  us. 


ESSAYS.  499 

However,  I  do  think  that  there  is  a  certain  superficial  show 
of  humility  in  the  agnostic  neutralism,  which  makes  it  taking  to 
some,  and  helps  multiply  disciples  for  it ;  more  show,  in  fact,  than 
there  is  in  the  humility  of  the  Idealist,  who  declines  to  believe  in 
the  physical  verities  of  the  agnostic,  on  the  ground  that  they  are 
not  solidly  discoverable,  while  man's  soul,  and  God,  and  the  forty 
Unseens  are. 

Now,  if  Agnosticism,  and  its  entire  tribe  (Materialism,  Secu- 
larism, Utilitarianism,  and  the  rest),  were  simply  so  many  gymnasia 
for  the  exercise  of  the  intellectual  faculties  of  men,  where  people  of 
leisure  and  acumen  could  spend  a  spare  hour  occasionally,  and  get 
a  good  sweat  pushing  against  each  other,  then  there  would  be  no 
occasion  for  alarm  at  them.  But  the  truth  is,  their  speculations  are 
practically  just  a  hundred-handed  infernal  bomb-throwing  every- 
whither among  the  sacredest  treasures  of  mankind. 

It  is  a  pretty  considerable  move  to  retire  God  into  the  limbo 
of  Neutralism,  and  make  him  a  practical  nonentity  to  his  creatures  ; 
such  feeble  small  children  "crying  in  the  night,"  as  we  are.  And 
quite  a  move,  to  take  a  man  thus  bereaved  of  God,  and  circum- 
scribe him  in  the  seven-by-nine  cage  of  the  Present  and  the  Sensi- 
ble, when  he  has  generally  been  accustomed  to  suppose  that  this,  his 
present  state,  was  only  a  small  preambulation  preparatory  to  the 
real  and  solid  business  of  living.  And  quite  a  move  to  bewilder 
the  consciousness  of  man,  as  to  its  own  unrestrainable  affirmatives ; 
and  put  the  free  soul  under  the  despotism  of  material  causes,  by 
demonstrating  that  the  soul  itself  is  a  material  entity. 

When  all  these  things  are  fully  done,  where  are  your  highest 
sanctions  of  civil  law?  Law  rests  on  mere  prudentialism,  when  you 
are  not  permitted  to  track  it  back  into  the  bosom  of  God  ;  and  its 
awfullest  efficacies  are  gone.  And  where  is  your  best  literature? 
Take  the  supersensible  out  of  your  Poets,  and  what  flabby  nobodies 
they  are.  Think  of  an  agnostic  Shakespeare,  an  agnostic  Words- 
worth, an  agnostic  Tennyson,  an  agnostic  Milton,  an  agnostic 
Bryant.  Talk  about  "Hamlet  with  Hamlet  left  out  !"  Why,  this 
were  Shakespeare  with  Shakespeare  left  out.  These  men  formulated 
their  material  from  two  sources ;  from  human  life,  and  from  the 
external  creation.  But  do  they  stick  fast  in  externals  ?  Is  it  not 
the  very  glory  of  their  genius  that  they  go  behind  all  surfaces,  and 
leaven  the  sensible  with  the  supersensible,  and  make  us  all  feel  that 
we  have  our  rootages  in  a  spiritual  soil  ?     If  they  describe  a  land- 


500  ESSAYS. 

scape,  do  they  make  it  to  be  just  a  spectacle  ?  Do  they  not  rather 
show  it  in  its  spiritual  meanings  ?  The  multifold  visible  is  only  the 
hither  face  of  the  invisible  ;  it  is  God  stated  ;  and  by  as  much  as 
man  is  made  in  the  image  of  God,  it  is  Man  stated ;  yea,  the  gigan- 
tic vernacular  of  those  two  it  is ;  and  it  were  a  shallow  piece  of 
business  for  a  man  not  to  recognize  his  native  tongue.  Poets  do  ; 
at  least,  the  mightiest  and  deepest  of  them  ;  and  that  is  their  great 
distinction  among  men.  In  fact,  it  is  enough  to  make  a  genius  of 
any  man,  to  have  just  that  sense  of  the  interiors  of  things. 

And  the  same  distinction  holds  in  regard  to  Artists.  An 
agnostic  artist  may  present  forms  and  sensible  facts,  and  may  gain  a 
certain  eminence  by  that  mere  mechanical  knack ;  but  to  make  a 
landscape  live,  you  must  penetrate  to  its  living  substratum.  Or, 
take  a  human  face  ;  what  a  blasphemy  against  the  soul  behind  it  it 
would  be,  to  paint  some  faces  in  their  physical  literality.  The  face 
of  Ralph  Waldo  Emerson,  taken  agnostically,  is  as  unornamental  a 
fact  as  the  dog-faced  knob  on  a  front  door ;  but  taken  from  the 
interior,  I  have  seen  it  shine  in  a  lambent  splendor  for  the  instant, 
in  a  manner  distinctly  supernatural.  And  it  ought  to  be  painted 
just  when  thus  inundated  by  the  supersensible ;  or  not  painted 
at  all. 

Another  of  the  fundamental  infirmities  of  Agnosticism  is,  that 
it  does  not  provide  a  sufficient  basis  for  morality.  Of  course,  that 
is  strenuously  denied  by  agnostical  thinkers,  and  to  deal  with  their 
denial  fully  were  the  work  of  a  book  rather  than  an  essay,  so  that  I 
can  only  refer  to  it  here. 

Morality  considered  as  having  in  it  an  ethical,  or  moral,  ele- 
ment, (an  element  that  is,  of  right  and  conscience)  must  get  its 
ground  of  right  in  one  or  more  of  the  following  considerations  : 

First.  Men  may  do  thus  or  so  because  it  contributes  to  the 
public  welfare,  that  being  the  ultimate  and  one  thing  that  makes 
right,  right. 

Secondly.  Men  may  do  thus  or  so  because  it  contributes  to 
their  own  welfare,  that  being  the  ultimate  standard  of  right. 

Thirdly.  Men  may  do  thus  or  so  because  they  thus  conform 
to  the  laws  of  their  own  nature,  those  laws  being  the  standard  of 
right. 

Fourthly.  Men  may  do  thus  or  so  in  conformity  to  the  laws 
of  their  environment,  that  being  the  standard  of  right ;  under  that 
term  environment  being  included  the  totality  of  a  person's  circum- 


ESSAYS.  501 

stances,    such  as,    external    nature,    social   surroundings,    and   his 
manifold  encircling  temporalities. 

Fifthly.  Some  have  managed  to  get  themselves  so  low  down 
as  to  consider  self-indulgence,  or  a  literal  obedience  to  all  our 
natural  impulses,  the  law  of  right ;  a  very  beastly  and  almost 
incredible  self-obfuscation. 

And  Sixthly.  Men  may  do  thus  or  so  in  obedience  to  the  will 
of  a  supernatural,  personal,  and  supreme  Power;  known  in  our 
vocabulary  as  God. 

Now,  I  say,  if  morality,  considered  as  having  in  it  an  element 
of  Tightness,  is  to  survive,  it  must  survive  as  resting  back  on  the 
will  of  God,  or  on  some  one  of  these  earth-bound  and  sense-bound 
views.  But  Agnosticism,  as  teaching  that  God  is  not  discoverable, 
is  compelled  to  base  its  morality  on  these  sense-bound  or  material- 
istic views,  and  the  question  arises  :  "  Are  these  views  an  adequate 
basis  of  morality?"  Professor  Tyndall,  Professor  Huxley,  Herbert 
Spencer,  Mr.  Darwin,  John  Stuart  Mill,  Professor  Clifford,  George 
Eliot,  and  a  bright  multitude  more,  say :  Yes,  morality  can  stand 
without  any  reference  whatever  to  the  will  of  a  God ;  there  is  no 
God  ;  or,  if  there  be,  the  mind  of  man  cannot  find  him.  On  the 
other  hand,  the  Christian  thinkers  say  :  Take  away  God,  and  mor- 
ality breaks  down.  It  may  keep  along  for  a  time  by  virtue  of  the 
momentum  which  it  has  acquired  under  the  push  of  a  God-inspired 
religion  for  thousands  of  years,  just  as  a  steamer  may  advance  for 
quite  a  while  after  its  engine  has  stopped ;  but  as  that  steamer  con- 
tinually slows  and  at  last  ceases  from  all  movement,  and  rolls  help- 
lessly and  chaotically,  so  morality,  emptied  of  God  and  his 
sanctions,  eventually  falls  into  a  chaotic  rolling,  and  becomes  a 
mere  wreck. 

In  support  of  their  idea  that  morality  can  take  care  of  itself, 
and  would  be  in  no  wise  bereaved  or  enfeebled  were  Theism  to 
perish  eternally  from  the  earth,  the  materialists  resort  to  several 
lines  of  thought. 

They  refer  us  to  numerous  actual  instances  of  an  absolutely 
untheistic  morality.  To  which  we  reply  :  There  is  not  any  real 
instance.  I  presume  that  eminent  English  atheist,  Mr.  Bradlaugh, 
would  be  glad  to  offer  himself  as  a  first-class  instance  of  a  person 
emptied  of  God,  and  yet  not  demoralized  ;  but  Mr.  Bradlaugh  was 
born  of  a  Christian  stock,  was  rocked  in  lullabies  of  the  Christian 
faith,  no  doubt,  did  breathe  the  airs  of  Christian  England  before 


502  ESSAYS. 

he  knew  what  he  was  breathing,  and  was  thus  manifoldly  mortgaged 
to  religion  ;  so  that  now  if  he  was  brayed  with  a  pestle  in  a  mortar, 
and  his  ultimate  atoms  exposed,  it  would  be  found  that  every  atom 
of  him  was  spoiled,  for  our  purpose  as  an  illustration,  by  a  theistic 
or  religious  tinge.  Religion  cannot  be  purged  out  of  a  man,  nor 
out  of  the  structure  of  society,  so  as  to  furnish  a  blank  instance  ot 
godless  morality.  Carry  the  sea-shell  to  the  outposts  of  the  uni- 
verse, and  even  there  you  will  detect  in  it  the  unspent  voice  of  the 
sea  ;  and  let  a  people  carry  themselves  away  from  God  by  a  depart- 
ure immeasurable,  still  all  over  them  would  be  seen  the  marks  of 
their  indefeasible  creatureship  in  him,  and  of  their  nurture  in  the 
wholesome  airs  of  his  moral  administration.  We  cannot  get  a 
thoroughly  blank  human  specimen,  to  examine,  I  say. 

Again,  I  would  assert,  that  a  thorough  inspection  of  nations 
that  have  gone  upon  record,  shows  that  religion — or  a  belief  in  God 
and  an  eternal  life — greatly  nourishes  morality,  and  that  morality, 
therefore  would  have  starved  in  those  recorded  instances  had 
religion  been  withdrawn. 

Some  would  say  that  some  historic  religions  have  been  so  full 
of  monstrous  conceptions  of  deities  and  so  on,  and  these  concep- 
tions have  operated  such  debasement  on  practical  life,  that  to  have 
exploded  the  religions,  and  remitted  the  peoples  concerned  to  the 
mere  earthly  prudentialisms  as  the  bases  of  their  morality,  would 
have  been  a  great  improvement ;  but  I  deny  that,  and  as  against  it, 
speak  a  word  of  the  insufficiency  of  the  several  utilitarian  and 
prudential  substructives  of  morality.  I  think  that  the  theory  which 
makes  the  highest  happiness  of  humanity  at  large  the  rule  of  right 
acting  for  each  man,  is  about  as  handsome  looking  as  any  of  the 
earth-bound  rules  of  virtue.  Do  in  every  case  what  would  be  for 
the  universal  good  : — that  is  the  theory.  Well,  a  redoubtable 
sociologist,  like  Herbert  Spencer,  or  a  powerful  man  of  philosophic 
leisure,  like  John  Stuart  Mill,  might  gradually  elaborate  a  scheme  of 
practice  for  himself,  well  conformed  to  the  happiness  of  universal 
man ;  but  most  of  us  want  something  simpler  than  that : — a  plain 
command  of  some  supreme  personal  authority,  were  worth  to  the 
average  man  a  million  of  these  grand  ways  of  getting  at  a  valid 
morality.  The  welfare  of  humanity  is  a  too  vast  and  vague  object- 
ive on  which  to  fasten,  and  by  which  to  rule  and  inspire  ourselves. 

And  speaking  of  inspiration  reminds  me  to  say,  that  a  morality 
which  draws  its  sanctions  and  imperatives  from  God,  has  reached 


ESSAYS.  503 

the  head-springs  of  all  highest  inspiration,  for  creatures  made  just  as 
we  are.  It  is  possible  to  fire  up  and  get  enthused  over  abstrac- 
tions, to  a  degree,  but  always  the  supremest  fascination  is  a  personal 
fascination,  as  I  might  illustrate  at  large.  God's  works  are  appeal- 
ing ;  and  God's  providence  is  so  ;  but  God  himself  is  ten  times  so  ; 
and  when  he  stands  forth  in  his  eternal  Son,  and  gives  us  the  express 
image  and  very  fullness  of  his  Godhead,  in  a  human  personalization, 
nothing  so  appealing  can  be  conceived  ;  the  whole  thing  is  in  the 
line  of  our  natural  interest  in  persons,  and  every  faculty  in  us  is  put 
upon  its  utmost.  Let  a  morality  get  its  law  and  its  impulse  there, 
in  that  divine  Person,  rather  than  in  some  impersonal  and  purely 
terrestrial  consideration,  and  it  cannot  be  otherwise  than  the  very 
noblest,  and  cannot  be  otherwise  than  spontaneous,  affirmative  and 
beautiful ;  in  fact,  morality,  when  thus  inflamed  and  sublimated, 
becomes  religion,  and  precisely  that  mergence  and  organic  unifica- 
tion of  the  two  is  life,  our  life,  in  its  highest  ideal.  One  might 
think,  at  first,  that  the  general  human  welfare,  as  a  rule  of  morality, 
is  a  rather  personal  thing,  and  has  in  it  some  personal  warmth  of 
appeal ;  and  it  has  (somewhat)  ;  after  all  however,  Humanity  has  a 
too  vague  and  multitudinous  sound,  to  be  really  effective.  It  is 
next  thing  to  impersonality. 

I  have  virtually  said  it  already,  but  I  want  to  say  now  very  dis- 
tinctly, that  all  those  utilitarian  and  materialistic  grounds  of  duty 
which  the  sceptical  philosophers  are  trying  to  put  off  upon  us,  as  a 
substitute  for  the  imperatives  of  religion,  are  too  nearly  on  a  plane 
with  ourselves,  for  a  real  solar  lift  upon  us.  We  are  in  the  flesh, 
and  our  feet  stand  on  the  earth,  and  it  is  not  much  to  us  to  be 
pulled  on  by  fleshly  and  earthly  considerations  ;  we  cannot  get  more 
than  about  so  high,  unless  something  transcendental  and  supernal 
takes  hold  of  us.  Out  of  the  sky,  we  want  the  sanctions  of  our 
morality  to  come  ;  if  we  do  right,  we  want  to  feel  that  the  Tightness 
of  our  right  rests  back  on  the  Most  High  God ;  if  we  hear  any 
thunders  of  doom  when  we  do  wrong,  we  need  to  have  them  sound 
forth  from  a  far-away  eternal  life  ;  a  doom  with  a  long  roll  in  it,  and 
not  the  rattle  of  a  mere  this-world  reverberation.  Morality  grows 
earnest  and  behaves  itself,  when  addressed  by  these  practically 
infinite  exhortations. 

In  my  indictment  of  Agnosticism,  I  would  not  fail  to  mention 
distinctly  before  I  close  (what  I  have  hinted  already),  namely,  that 
it  is  very  full  of  sorrowfulness  of  spirit  for  those  who  embrace  it,  as 


504  ESSAYS. 

is  proven  by  many  a  pathetic  confession  by  agnostic  celebrities. 
Being  an  agnostic  does  not  discharge  a  person  from  the  constitu- 
tional longings  of  the  universal  human  soul.  He  still  needs  and, 
at  times,  yearns  for  a  God,  his  light  in  darkness,  his  consolation  in 
grief,  his  rest  in  weariness,  his  companion  in  the  awful  stress  of  the 
spirit's  inevitable  lonesomeness.  He  still  revolts  from  annihilation 
with  its  unutterable  silence  and  darkness,  its  ever-extended  cessation 
from  all  the  joys  and  zests  of  being.  And  quite  as  much  as  his  own 
everlasting  nothingness  when  his  life  ends,  does  his  soul  abhor  that 
separation  forever  from  all  whom  he  loves,  which  is  a  part  of  his 
dreadful  doctrine.  Yes,  he  is  a  man  like  the  rest  of  us,  with  a 
man's  outreachings,  wonderings,  and  inappeasable  tendernesses. 
Therefore  his  unbelief  is  an  agony  to  him,  whenever  he  grows  seri- 
ous and  lets  the  great  instincts  of  his  better  nature  play.  And  there 
is  nothing  in  literature  more  deep-hearted  and  touching  than  the 
frank  confessions,  at  this  point,  of  some  of  the  modern  leaders  of 
unbelief.  See  poor  John  Stuart  Mill,  leaving  his  native  England, 
and  spending  the  last  years  of  his  life  on  a  malarious  and  death- 
dealing  spot  in  Southern  France,  that  he  might  be  close  by,  and 
constantly  visit,  the  grave  of  that  wife  whom  he  fairly  adored,  but 
whom  he  did  not  quite  dare  expect  ever  to  meet  again. 

Read  the  cheerless  epitaph  which  the  atheistic  Clifford,  of 
England,  the  brilliant  Mathematical  Professor  of  the  Cambridge  Uni- 
versity, ordered  placed  over  his  own  grave  :  "  I  was  not — I  was 
begotten — I  lived — I  am  not."  There  it  stands  over  the  place 
where,  gone  in  his  young  manhood,  he  sleeps  the  long  sleep.  Or 
listen  to  these  words  in  one  of  his  published  essays  :  "It  cannot  be 
doubted  that  belief  in  a  God  is  a  comfort  and  a  solace  to  those  who 
hold  it,  and  that  the  loss  of  it  is  a  very  painful  loss.  It  cannot  be 
doubted,  at  least,  by  many  of  us  in  this  generation,  who  either  pro- 
fess it  now,  or  received  it  in  our  childhood,  and  have  parted  from  it 
since  with  such  searching  trouble  as  only  cradle  faiths  can  cause. 
We  have  seen  the  Spring  sun  shine  out  of  an  empty  heaven  to  light 
up  a  soulless  earth.  We  have  felt  with  utter  loneliness  that  the 
Great  Companion  is  dead.  Our  children,  it  may  be  hoped,  will 
know  that  sorrow  only  by  the  reflex  light  of  a  wondering  com- 
passion." 

So  much,  poor  Clifford.  Or  listen  to  another  of  kindred  spirit, 
an  able,  sad,  man,  in  the  forward  ranks  of  those  who  deny  God  and 
eternity,  and  preach  the  gospel  of  despair.     He   thinks,  not  only 


ESSAYS.  505 

that  an  endless  Future  cannot  be  discovered  by  the  anxious  mind  of 
man,  but  that,  as  we  pass  on  into  old  age,  we  care  less  and  less 
whether  it  can  be  discovered.  He  says  :  "  Age  has  quenched  the 
passionate  desire  of  life  with  which  at  first  we  stepped  upon  this 
earthly  scene.  We  are  tired,  some  of  us,  with  unending  and 
unprofitable  toil ;  we  are  satiated,  others  of  us,  with  such  ample 
pleasures  as  earth  can  yield  us ;  we  have  had  enough  of  ambition, 
alike  in  its  successes  and  its  failures ;  the  joys  and  blessings  of 
human  affection,  on  which,  whatever  their  crises  and  vicissitudes,  no 
honest  and  truthful  man  will  cast  a  slur,  are  yet  so  blended  with 
pains  which  partake  of  their  intensity  ;  the  thirst  for  knowledge  is 
not  slaked,  indeed,  but  the  capacity  for  the  labor  by  which  alone 
knowledge  can  be  gained  has  consciously  died  out ;  the  appetite  for 
life,  in  short,  is  gone,  the  frame  is  worn  and  the  faculties  exhausted, 
and  the  idea  of  renewed  existence  can  offer  no  inspiring  charms. 
Our  being,  upon  earth,  has  been  enriched  by  vivid  interests  and 
precious  joys,  and  we  are  deeply  grateful  for  the  gift,  but  we  are 
wearied  with  one  life,  and  feel  scarcely  qualified  to  enter  on  the 
claims  of  another.  It  may  be  the  fatigue  which  comes  of  age — 
fatigue  of  the  fancy  as  well  as  of  the  frame — but  somehow  what  we 
yearn  for  most  instinctively  at  last,  is  rest ;  and  the  peace  which  we 
can  imagine  the  easiest,  because  we  know  it  best,  is  that  of  sleep." 
And  by  rest  and  sleep,  Mr.  Greg  means  annihilation. 

Eighteen  hundred  years  before  Greg  poured  forth  this  melan- 
choly strain,  another  celebrated  man,  also  nearing  the  close  of  life, 
vented  his  mind  on  this  wise  :  "  I  am  now  ready  to  be  offered,  and 
the  time  of  my  departure  is  at  hand.  I  have  fought  a  good  fight,  I 
have  finished  my  course,  I  have  kept  the  faith ;  henceforth  there  is 
laid  up  for  me  a  crown  of  righteousness,  which  the  Lord,  the 
righteous  Judge,  shall  give  me  at  that  day ;  and  not  to  me  only,  but 
unto  all  them  also  that  love  his  appearing." 

Now,  Mr.  Greg  himself  would  say  that  this  swan-song  of  St. 
Paul  was  three  times  happier  and  more  engaging  than  his,  but  he 
would  proceed  immediately  to  add  ; — "  It  is  no  proof  of  the  valid- 
ity of  a  faith  that  it  is  pleasing  to  the  mind  ;  in  three  quarters  of  all 
known  instances  in  this  life,  what  we  want,  and  would  enjoy,  does 
not  come  to  us ;  and  we  must  not  infer  immortality  from  the  fact 
that  we  desire  it  (as  most  people  confessedly  do)."  To  which  I 
should  reply  :  It  is  hardly  possible  not  to  feel  that  any  religious  view 
which  meets  and  satisfies  the  deepest  and  most  beneficent  longings 
33 


506  ESSAYS. 

of  men,  in  all  ages  and  races  and  under  all  circumstances,  presum- 
ably has  something  in  it.  It  is  not  demonstrably  true  (that  view  is 
not),  it  cannot  be  validated  by  a  scientific  process  of  reasoning,  but 
it  rests  on  moral  evidence  which  is  well  nigh  irresistible. 

I  should  charge  it,  then,  upon  these  great  Modern  Denials 
(Agnosticism  and  the  rest),  that  they  make  no  sufficient  provision 
for  our  unutterable  and  most  pathetic  necessities. 

And  they  cannot  prevail.  They  are  antagonized  by  the  great 
moral  and  other  intuitions  of  mankind.  They  are  likely  to  be 
repudiated  whensoever  we  come  into  moments  of  extremity,  in  the 
passing  of  our  life ;  as  when  we  are  in  great  peril,  or  in  a  deep 
sense  of  guilt,  or  forsaken,  or  bereaved,  or  profoundly  confused  and 
afflicted  by  the  disorders  of  the  creation  ;  moreover,  great  intuition- 
alists  are  sure  to  arise,  men  of  exceptional  profundity,  comprehen- 
sion, will  and  magnetism,  who  will  overwhelmingly  re-assert  the  great 
and  holy  faiths  of  the  world,  obscured,  for  the  time,  by  the  dust- 
throwing  of  materialistic  thought.  And  finally,  to  make  all  seven 
times  sure,  the  Holy  Ghost  is  here  on  earth  operating  in  the  inter- 
est of  faith ;  and  whenever  that  Mighty  Spirit  goes  into  a  human 
soul,  and  there  generates  a  supernatural  experience,  that  soul 
becomes  anti-agnostic,  anti-Clifford,  anti-Greg  and  anti-everything 
you  can  think  of  that  would  blot  out  the  world  of  spiritual  realities 
and  the  life  immortal,  and  endungeon  us  in  what  Clifford  calls 
"an  empty  sky,  and  a  soulless  earth,"  wherein  the  function  of  man 
is  to  sit  in  utter  loneliness,  and  mournfully  wish  there  only  somehow 
could  be  a  God. 


SERMONS. 


THE  CHURCH  OF  THE 
LIVING  GOD. 


Delivered  at  the  Organization  of  Dwight  Place  Church, 
New  Haven,  Conn.,  Dec.  5,  1872. 


As  we  are  gathered  this  evening  for  the  organization  of  a 
Christian  Church,  what  I  have  to  say  to  you  will  be  thrown  into  the 
form  of  a  reply  to  the  question  :  In  what  respect  is  the  Church 
God's?  According  to  that  expression  of  Holy  Writ  recorded  in 
Timothy  iii,  15,  "the  church  of  the  living  God." 

And  I  shall  have  accomplished  my  whole  design  if  I  succeed 
in  recapitulating  and  putting  before  you,  with  a  degree  of  freshness, 
certain  points  of  your  own  familiar  knowledge. 

First  then,  the  Church  is  His  because  He  founded  it.  And 
this  may  be  illustrated  by  several  courses  of  thought. 

There  is  that  in  the  constitution  of  the  human  mind  itself  which 
predisposes  us,  and  not  merely  that  but  morally  forces  us,  as  you 
might  say,  to  associate  ourselves  with  those  who  have  been  through 
experiences  like  our  own,  or  are  running  a  course  of  life  parallel  to 
ours ;  and  the  deeper  these  experiences  and  the  more  marked  the 
course  of  life,  the  more  inevitable  and  the  more  binding  and  sweet 
is  this  affiliation.  Wherefore,  the  world  is  full  of  guilds,  confedera- 
tions, fraternities,  cliques,  parties,  civil  communities  and  the  like. 
Sometimes  it  is  a  society  of  artists.  Sometimes  a  cooperative  union 
of  work  people.  Sometimes  an  alumni  association.  Or,  again,  it  is 
an  international  society  extending  through  all  lands,  or  a  scientific 
society,  or  a  gang  of  rogues  engaged  in  a  common  course  of  trans- 
gression. The  forms  of  these  leagues  are  as  various  and  innumer- 
able as  the  circumstances  of  life,  but  they  all  rest  at  last  on  the 


510  SERMONS. 

constitutional  gravitation  of  like  to  like,  which  gravitation  is  the 
clear  voice  of  the  Most  High  himself,  on  the  question  of  these  social 
crystalizations  into  this  and  that — not  his  approval  of  this  or  that 
particular  form  of  the  thing,  not  that  of  course,  but  his  approval  of 
the  general  idea  of  fraternization  and  organization  on  common 
grounds  of  experience  and  design.  It  is  his  will  that  men  should 
confederate  kind  with  kind,  else  he  would  not  have  stocked  them 
so  heavily  with  that  instinct  of  association,  even  as  he  would  not 
have  so  filled  every  orb  in  the  sky  with  an  irresistible  outgoing 
toward  its  fellow  orbs,  except  as  he  had  determined  that  they  should 
troop  the  firmament  in  joyful  grand  companies,  in  an  eternal 
rhythm  and  song. 

Well  then,  take  the  souls  of  men  and  fill  them  with  all  the  full- 
ness of  God,  or  strike  a  lower  key  and  let  them  take  in  only  the 
precious  beginnings  of  that  fullness  ;  such  as  the  sense  of  guilt  taken 
away,  the  struggle  of  new  purposes  in  them,  the  uplift  of  unaccus- 
tomed longings,  the  emancipations  from  bondages  more  or  less,  the 
new  vision  of  Christ,  the  ever  increasing  and  adoring  grasp  of  his 
work  as  it  relates  itself  to  the  throne  of  God  and  the  necessity  of 
man,  the  trust  in  Providence,  and  the  secret  answers  to  prayers  sent 
up  in  the  name  of  the  Mediator,  and  the  firm  out-look  into  life,  and 
the  peaceful  anticipation  of  death  as  a  moment  of  victory  through 
him  who  has  loved  us  all.  Why  !  with  these  and  things  like  these 
in  numbers  of  people  scattered  about,  how  could  it  be  at  all  avoided 
that  they  should  seek  each  other,  as  contiguous  drops  of  water  long 
each  for  each  and  strive  to  make  one  flood ;  and  why  is  not  this 
instinct  of  aggregation  as  much  divine,  divinely  intended  and  infalli- 
ble, as  the  southward  impulse  of  departing  birds  in  the  chill  Autumn. 

Is  the  organization  of  men  in  civil  communities  a  divine  thing, 
as  being  the  normal  outcome  of  our  human  nature  all  the  world 
round?  And  is  marriage  something  divine  for  a  similar  reason? 
And  do  all  thoughtful  and  right-thinking  men  on  that  account  attach 
a  certain  sanctity  to  these  things,  and  bow  to  them  with  a  reverence 
beyond  what  can  possibly  be  accorded  to  any  contrivance  of  man  ? 
Then  does  the  Church  shine  also  with  the  signatures  of  divinity  and 
demand  our  homage  as  her  birthright. 

And  this  presumption  in  favor  of  the  thought  that  the  Church 
is  God's,  derived  from  our  natural  constitution,  is  confirmed,  of 
course,  and  lifted  above  all  doubt  so  soon  as  we  open  the  Bible  on 
the  subject  and  begin  to  receive  its  testimonials.     I  will  not  go  back 


SERMONS.  511 

into  the  far  Old  Testament  period,  although  our  subject  fairly  takes 
us  there  •  but  I  ask  you  to  remember  how  common  this  expression 
of  my  text — "the  church  of  the  living  God" — is  in  the  New  Testa- 
ment. St.  Paul  seems  to  have  an  especial  affection  for  it.  He 
speaks  to  the  Thessalonians  of  "  the  churches  of  God  which  in  Judea 
are  in  Christ  Jesus."  "The  churches  of  God."  And  in  like 
manner  to  the  Corinthians,  he  says  :  "  despise  ye  the  church  of 
God?"  And  in  another  place — "Give  none  offence  neither  to  the 
Jews  nor  to  the  Gentiles,  nor  to  the  church  of  God." 

You  will  observe  too,  how  frequently  the  Church  is  called  "the 
body  of  Christ."  And  how  it  is  said  that  he  loved  the  church  and 
gave  himself  for  it.  And  how  God  chose  it  to  be  the  theatre  on 
which,  and  the  organ  through  which,  he  would  display  himself  even 
"unto  the  principalities  and  powers  in  heavenly  places," — demon- 
strating his  manifold  wisdom,  as  the  expression  is,  beyond  all  the 
disclosures  he  had  ever  made  in  the  glorious  physical  creation. 

Furthermore,  the  book  of  the  Acts  is  a  quite  extended  account 
of  the  way  Christ's  Apostles,  instinct  with  his  own  animus  and  put 
on  precisely  the  right  work  by  the  indwelling  Spirit  of  God,  went 
to  and  fro  gathering  churches  in  his  name  and  to  his  glory,  thus 
giving  unto  men  forever  a  sure  sign  as  to  God's  will  and  the  true 
way  of  assisting  Christianity  in  the  world. 

And  what  is  baptism  (which  he  certainly  appointed),  but  an 
initiation  into  something ;  and  what  is  that  something,  but  a  divine 
society  ? 

And  besides  this,  hath  not  our  God  put  upon  us  poor,  broken 
mortals,  gigantic  works  in  his  behalf,  which  it  were  impossible  for  us 
to  fulfill,  did  we  remain  in  isolation  one  from  the  other?  We  are 
commanded  to  assist  each  other  in  the  things  of  the  spiritual  life, 
and  to  hold  forth  the  light  of  life  for  the  illumination  of  the  dark 
world  ;  to  withstand  error  and  upturn  communities  of  selfishness, 
and  cleanse  the  whole  air  of  the  globe,  and  push  perpetually  for- 
ward a  vast,  impossible  propagandism — impossible  on  principles  of 
sheer  individualism,  and  impossible,  I  may  add,  on  any  natural  prin- 
ciples whatever. 

Wherefore,  I  lay  it  down  as  my  first  point,  that  the  Church  is 
God's,  because  he  both  directly  and  indirectly  founded  it. 

And  I  hasten  joyfully  to  declare  unto  you,  in  the  second 
place,  that  she  is  his,  because  he  has  preserved  her  in  a  manner  often 
remarked  upon  as  being  very  wonderful,  and  as  being  full  of  omens 


512  SERMONS. 

for  the  periods  yet  to  come.  I  can  say  not  much  about  this  great 
and  thrilling  matter  now,  but  you  yourselves  know  what  enormous 
disadvantages  have  at  different  times  (and  all  the  time),  loaded 
themselves  on  the  Christian  Church  and  how  in  despite  of  all  and 
in  a  sense,  by  the  help  of  all,  she  has  maintained  herself  and 
enlarged  herself  and  strewn  the  ages  with  her  victories.  Christ 
himself  said  that  the  gates  of  Hell  should  not  prevail  against  her. 
And  they  have  not.  They  have  tried.  They  have  resorted  to  physi- 
cal force.  They  have  marshalled  great  armies  in  the  business.  They 
have  undertaken  private  murders,  and  have  practiced  all  sorts  of 
private  and  public  torments  on  Christ's  helpless  ones  ;  and  have  thus 
unwittingly  lifted  one  and  another  of  their  victims  into  a  celebrity 
whereby  they  have  been  ministering  spirits  to  the  whole  body  of 
God's  people  in  all  generations  since.  For  there  never  died  a  Chris- 
tian martyr  who  did  not  multiply  men  and  women  of  the  martyr 
spirit  beyond  all  computation. 

And  in  addition  to  force  physical,  all  sorts  of  forces  spiritual 
and  intellectual,  have  been  thrown  into  the  field  against  her.  Athe- 
ism has  assaulted  her  God.  Pantheism  has  assaulted  her  personal 
God.  Naturalism  has  laid  siege  to  her  very  corner-stones,  and  done 
what  she  could  to  discredit  her  supernatural  claims  and  overturn  her 
adorable  mysteries.  Spiritualism  has  undertaken  to  supplement  her 
spiritualism  by  one  more  authentic  and  all-revealing.  Morality  has 
promised  to  supplant  her  by  something  just  as  good  as  herself,  and 
has  always  been  at  it.  Materialism  has  breathed  upon  all  her  inter- 
ests with  her  pestilent  cold  breath.  Old  paganisms,  too,  have  set  up 
their  colossal  forms  in  dispute  of  her  progress,  confronting  her 
antiquity  with  an  antiquity  almost  as  remote,  mustering  traditions, 
civilizations,  systems  of  education,  old  habits  of  thought  and  even 
many  alleged  supernatural  attestations,  in  antagonism  to  her  supreme, 
tremendous  claims. 

And  within  herself  and  among  her  own  people,  she  has  been 
set  upon  in  a  manner  to  destroy  her,  if  her  destruction  were  possible. 
Sacramentarians,  Roman  and  other,  have  striven  to  make  her  sacra- 
ments ridiculous,  by  their  preposterous  high  claims  in  regard  to 
them ;  and  Rationalists,  on  the  other  hand,  have  vacated  these 
sanctities  of  their  whole  pith  and  dignity,  by  a  philosophy  too  full 
of- the  earthly  to  have  any  divine  left  in  it.  Yes,  the  Church  herself 
has  swarmed  with  partialists  and  partialisms  of  many  kinds, — preach- 
ers in  an  enthusiasm  amounting  to  a  monomania,  almost,  over  certain 


SERMONS.  513 

particulars  or  departments  of  Christian  truth,  while  to  other  partic- 
ulars of  the  same  authentic  and  precious  circle  of  truth  they  have 
been  nearly  blind  ;  theologians  handling  the  things  of  God,  in  a 
similar  disproportion ;  creeds  good  enough  so  far  as  they  go,  but 
not  going  far ;  spasms  of  benevolence  in  certain  directions  and  no 
more ;  highly  charged  and  super-charged  individualities,  too  indi- 
vidual to  be  brought  into  any  general  scheme  of  order  and  truth ; 
eccentricities,  fanaticisms,  conscientious  ferocities,  abnormal  mani- 
festations without  number ;  these  miserable  infelicities  and  sorrowful 
great  adversities,  have  discomposed  the  Church  within  herself,  I  say, 
and  have  joined  with  adversities  more  external,  to  make  her  way 
down  the  centuries  one  of  tumult  and  strain  and  peril,  like  the 
passage  of  a  ship  through  cross-currents  and  through  wild  winds 
blowing  with  all  their  might  every  whither,  with  some  traitors  on 
board  besides,  and  many  more  who,  not  intentional  traitors,  do  so 
fuss  about  and  take  a  wrong  hold,  that  they  are  almost  as  hindering 
as  very  traitors. 

And  yet,  I  repeat  it,  this  institution  still  lives ;  and  where  she 
ought  in  all  reason  (more  reason),  to  have  died,  she  has  only  the 
more  abundantly  lived ;  and  where  certain  sharp  men  and  men  of 
genius  have  prophesied  that  she  would  go  under,  she  has  persistently 
floated ;  and  where  she  has  been  so  worm-eaten  by  error,  that  she 
might  have  been  supposed  to  be  eaten  clear  through  and  about  to 
fill,  she  has  not  filled,  somehow  she  has  not.  And  although,  doubtless 
ofttimes,  she  has  been  invisibly  attacked  by  devils,  and  although  these 
same  spirits  of  evil  have  lent  the  enthusiasm  of  their  own  animosity 
to  the  human  creatures  who  have  set  themselves  in  array  against 
her,  thus  making  their  energy  more  energetic,  and  their  craft  more 
crafty,  and  their  perseverance  more  unconquerable ;  and  although 
Death  has  not  failed  to  stalk  into  the  field  and  continually  seize  away 
the  forces  of  the  Church,  one  by  one,  and  sometimes  by  hundreds, 
not  sparing  even  those  on  whom  the  cause  of  God  most  depends, 
the  air  being  forevermore  full  of  this  sorrowful  emigration  out  of  the 
earthly  into  the  heavenly,  so  that  in  a  few  years  there  would  be  no 
semblance  of  a  Church  left  in  all  the  world,  did  not  God  interfere 
to  maintain  his  own — behold  !  blessed  be  his  great  name,  he  does 
interfere ;  and  as  to  this  gluttonous  Death,  he  withstands  him 
and  nullifies  his  eternal  movement  of  destruction  among  the 
children  of  men,  by  mighty  inflowing  tides  of  new  life,  and  by 
incessant  glorious  regenerations  among  each  last-born  generation. 


514  SERMONS. 

Yea,  all  satanic  works  he  counter-works  in  ways  more  than  we 
know ;  but  among  the  rest,  by  angels  of  light  we  presume,  for 
have  they  not  always  attended  the  great  redemption,  from  the 
day  when  they  appeared  unto  Joseph  and  Mary,  down  to  this 
moment ;  and  all  along  the  pages  of  the  Bible  from  Genesis  to  John 
the  Revelator,  do  we  not  every  now  and  then  catch  the  gleam  of  them 
and  of  their  blessed  ministry,  they  being  so  touched  by  what  they 
know  of  our  case  and  the  boundless  grace  of  God  towards  us,  that 
they  can  in  no  wise  be  detained  behind  the  veil  which  screens  their 
land  from  ours.  Yes,  by  willing  angels,  by  the  Holy  Ghost,  by  the 
inspired  word,  by  indestructible  sacraments,  by  many  instruments  and 
intermediates,  but  chiefest  of  all,  by  his  own  direct  power  in  men 
both  good  and  bad,  in  one  inspiring  and  in  the  other  restraining,  he 
triumphantly  defends  the  Church  and  turns  all  her  defeats  into  vic- 
tories, putting  her  out  among  the  instabilities  of  the  world  and  the 
whirl  of  its  mutations,  as  one  thing  that  cannot  be  shaken  ;  overthrow- 
ing nations  but  preserving  her,  rolling  a  tide  here  in  which  empires, 
races,  tongues,  philosophies,  arts,  landmarks,  codes,  thrones  and 
every  conceivable  grandeur  and  fancied  immortality,  are  made  to 
sink  and  disappear,  like  foundered  ships,  while  on  this  same  tide  and 
over  its  peopled  sepulchres,  he  causes  this  one  indestructible  to  ride, 
if  not  serenely  yet  safely,  in  continual  verification  of  that  sure 
promise — "the  gates  of  Hell  shall  not  prevail  against  her."  In 
which  promise  we  have  summed,  in  one  sentence,  many  a  more 
amplified  and  resounding  Scripture  of  assurance  to  the  same  effect ; 
for,  as  far  back  as  the  Bible  runs,  the  steadfast  estate  of  the  Mili- 
tant Church  is  a  dear  theme,  and  there  is  nothing  anywhere  more 
majestic  and  melodious  than  the  utterances  of  David  and  Isaiah  and 
others,  when  they  voiced  their  whole  expectation  on  that  great  hope 
and  subject.  The  Church  is  the  church  of  the  living  God  then, 
because  he  has  amazingly  preserved  it. 

And  thirdly,  because  it  is  organized  for  purely  God-like 
ends.  The  Church  undertakes  the  case  of  her  own  membership,  in 
the  first  place,  and  strives  by  many  means  to  assimilate  them  to  God. 
She  thrusts  her  first  day,  her  Lord's  day,  in  among  the  rushing 
other  days  and  makes  a  space  of  peace  in  which  the  tumultuated 
faculties  of  men  may  compose  themselves  and  may  quietly  reach  out 
beyond  these  small  but  noisy  visibles,  these  finities,  this  transientness 
and  fading  glitter,  and  may  take  hold  on  the  substantial  and  ever- 
lasting.    And  that  first-day  silence  she  fills  with  voices  of  her  own. 


SERMONS.  515 

The  melody  of  her  bells  floats  out  over  the  tired  world.  Her  mani- 
fold distinct  utterances  of  God  and  eternity  and  obligation  and  sin 
and  redemption  silence  (or  would)  all  lesser  tones.  The  seclu- 
sion and  tranquillity  of  her  sanctuaries,  the  speech  of  her  preachers, 
the  more  full  and  forceful  speech  of  her  sacraments,  the  accord  of 
her  tuneful  assemblies,  the  outshinings  of  her  Holy  Book  ever  read 
and  studied,  the  uplift  of  her  prayers,  the  play  of  sanctified  human 
sympathies,  charging  the  very  air  of  the  temple  with  a  magnetism 
which,  ofttimes,  even  the  dullest  must  feel,  the  ingathering  of  child- 
ren and  the  flow  of  their  voices  in  prayer  or  hymn  ;  the  memories, 
too,  which  hallow  the  sanctuary  and  its  services,  the  early  times  of 
one's  own  life  that  are  in  those  services,  the  long-gone  blessed  dead, 
who  draw  nigh  and  participate — by  all  these  and  other  ways  and 
forces,  the  Church  operates  to  safeguard  her  members  and  nurture 
their  holiness  and  arm  them  against  the  onsets  of  evil  and  prepare 
them  for  that  Eternity,  into  which  their  millions  on  earth  are  con- 
tinually emerging. 

That  is  one  of  her  purposes.  And  another  is  the  calling  in  of 
the  world's  people  as  rapidly  as  possible,  that  they  also  may  be  sub- 
jected to  this  same  drill  and  nurture  and  inspiration,  and  may  be 
lifted  to  that  same  home  and  rest  in  the  heavens. 

Recollect,  moreover,  what  ends  of  good  the  Church  secures 
outside  of  her  own  limits  and  in  the  world  at  large.  Even  where  she 
does  not  convert,  she  does  authoritatively  arrest  a  good  deal  of  evil, 
and  foster  a  vast  deal  of  good.  What  checks  she  puts  upon  these 
slimy  and  reptile  issues  of  the  press,  so  that  they  do  not  overrun  us. 
What  tonic  currents  she  pours  through  literature  in  all  its  better 
forms.  How  she  holds  legislation  up  to  the  measures  of  equity  and 
virtue.  How  she  tempers  the  severities  of  government  and  breathes 
her  ameliorations  and  her  heavenly  health,  too,  into  prisons.  And 
she  presides  in  courts  and  strikes  the  balance  between  man  and  man. 
She  harmonizes  the  antagonisms  of  classes  and  races  and  jealous 
nations.  She  goes  to  the  field  of  battle  and  saves  men  from  the 
grossness  of  pure  murder  by  her  inspirations  of  noble  motive.  She 
enters  the  diplomacy  of  nations  to  expurgate  it  of  its  cunning  and 
irritability.  She  guides  the  brush  of  the  painter,  the  sceptre  of  the 
king,  the  pen  of  the  author,  the  brain  of  the  philosopher,  the  music 
of  the  poet,  the  movement  of  all  human  life.  Not  perfectly.  No, 
not  that.  But  she  comes  in  omnipresently  to  do  what  she  can,  and 
she  does  so  much  in  the  great  dark  outer  world — the  world   of 


516  SERMONS. 

ungodliness,  I  mean — that  nothing  is  as  it  would  straightway  be,  if 
she  should  withdraw  and  never  again  interpose  in  any  human  affair. 
She  buries  the  dead,  and  scarcely  ever  a  person  dies  but  she  is  sent 
for.  She  encloses  and  makes  beautiful  these  fields  of  graves,  which 
brighten  the  landscape.  She  writes  on  stone  and  brass  all  those 
sentences  of  comfort  and  hope  which  you  read  above  the  dead. 
She  presides  at  all  marriages,  and  the  most  abandoned  have  a  feeling 
that  their  love  has  not  had  set  upon  it  its  last  and  best  seal,  unless 
they  have  stood  at  her  altar  and  been  blessed  in  the  gracious  words 
of  her  benediction. 

These,  then,  are  the  ends  of  the  Church  ;  to  nurture  her  own,  to 
draw  in  and  bless  others,  and  then,  beyond  the  circuit  of  her  con- 
verting grace,  to  make  an  influence  in  behalf  of  God,  which,  while 
it  does  not  qualify  men  for  heaven,  does  put  them  in  the  way  of  a 
decent  life  on  the  earth  ;  and  these  aims  show  that  she  is  a  thing  of 
God,  belongs  to  him,  is  entitled  to  wear  his  name  and  ought  to  have 
been  called  by  the  Apostle,  as  she  was  "the  church  of  the  living 
God." 

I  had  thought,  under  a  fourth  head,  to  speak  of  the  final 
victory  promised  to  the  Church,  as  one  of  the  divine  signs  upon  her  ; 
but  that  thought  is  so  akin  to  that  of  the  miraculous  preservation  of 
her  thus  far  in  the  world,  that,  if  I  undertook  to  handle  it,  I  should 
most  likely  seem  repetitious. 

But  let  me  say  here,  if  the  Church  is  of  God  as  reaching  for- 
ward into  a  future,  so  resplendent  as  she  is,  as  reaching  back  into  an 
antiquity  most  remote  and  remarkable.  The  moment  I  think  of  her 
as  beginning  with  the  fall  of  man,  (or  at  least  beginning  to  be  spoken 
of  and  prepared  then)  and  thereafter  extending  clear  down  to  the 
end  of  the  world,  an  organized  and  ever-organizing  life,  the  central 
interest  of  every  era,  in  any  true  view  ;  the  one  and  only  thing  around 
which  Almighty  God  collects  his  principal  activities  and  plays  the 
full  splendors  of  his  nature  ;  the  one  institution  which  he  inhabits  and 
inspires  and  makes  the  organ  of  his  being  and  will,  insomuch  that  he 
calls  it  his  own  body ;  the  one  creature  of  his  which  he  certifies  to 
by  signs  supernatural  in  great  numbers  ;  the  one  thing  that  binds  all 
ages  together  and  makes  them  coherent  and  not  a  rope  of  sand ; 
the  reason  that  the  ages  have  been  and  shall  be  permitted  to  go  on 
and  unfold  themselves  ;  the  one  and  only  thing,  too,  that  shall  sur- 
vive the  end  of  the  world  and  move  off  full-freighted  and  undamaged 
when  all  here  has  gone  to  wreck — when  I  begin  to  remember  all 


SERMONS.  517 

this  of  the  Church,  then  forthwith  I  know  and  cannot  doubt,  that 
she  is  God's  precious  child  to  whom  he  is  more  committed  than  to  any 
othei,  and  in  whom  his  several  attributes  are  more  plenarily  resident. 
I  referred  to  her  antiquity.  And  aside  from  the  thought  that 
an  institution  which  started  so  early  and  has  survived  so  contin- 
uously is  therefore  and  undeniably  divine,  what  fascinations  there 
are  in  her  as  being  so  almost  immeasurably  old  and  as  garnering 
therefore  such  wonderful  memories.  What  fragrances  of  primeval 
piety  there  are  in  her  robes.  What  reverberations  of  history.  What 
haloed  great  names  illuminate  the  roll  of  her  redeemed  millions. 
What  gracious  heroisms,  what  splendors  of  faith,  what  sobbing  pen- 
itences, what  supreme  emergencies  supremely  mastered,  what  divine 
death-beds,  what  sonorous  rituals,  what  groans  of  typical  sacrifices, 
what  seerships,  what  prophetic  fulfillments,  what  a  drift  and  subtone 
of  ante-messianic  ages,  what  a  summation  of  six  thousand  mighty 
years,  the  years  of  God's  slowly  unfolding  redemption,  there  are  in 
her  and  carried  by  her  into  every  thoughtful  mind.  And  so,  when 
we  stand  in  the  crowded  ranks  of  her  membership,  into  what  personal 
associations  we  rise.  We  enter  into  the  fellowship  of  Abraham's 
faith  and  are  of  his  innumerable  seed.  We  are  joined  unto  the  elect 
souls  of  every  race  and  time,  to  the  glorious  company  of  the  Apos- 
tles, to  the  goodly  fellowship  of  the  Prophets,  to  the  noble  army  of 
Martyrs  ;  or,  as  the  great  Apostle  puts  it  in  his  full-toned  incompar- 
able way — "Ye  are  come  unto  Mount  Sion,  and  unto  the  city  of  the 
living  God,  the  heavenly  Jerusalem,  and  to  an  innumerable  company 
of  angels,  to  the  general  assembly  and  church  of  the  first  born, 
which  are  written  in  heaven,  and  to  God  the  Judge  of  all,  and  to  the 
spirits  of  just  men  made  perfect,  and  to  Jesus  the  mediator  of  the 
new  covenant,  and  to  the  blood,  sprinkling  of  that  speaketh  better 
things  than  that  of  Abel."  For  this  Church  spreads  over  two  worlds 
and  the  main  weight  of  her  membership  is  not  here.  Evermore,  the 
earthly  is  blossoming  into  the  heavenly,  and  the  feet  of  many  of  us 
here  do  already  take  hold  of  the  verge  of  that  other  department  of 
the  great  Kingdom  ;  and  our  souls  shall,  ere  long,  go  to  swell  that 
radiant  majority.  But  even  now,  in  our  more  perceptive  moments, 
we  feel  that  they  and  we  are  one.  We  are  great  by  their  greatness. 
Every  past  and  every  future  and  both  worlds  converge  to  God's 
Church  at  this  moment  on  earth  and  in  her  are  represented.  And 
in  this  view,  there  is  no  strong  passage  of  Scripture  referring  to  her, 
which  is  any  more  than  commensurate  with  her  greatness  ;  and  our 


518  SERMONS. 

hearts  are  ready  to  say  with  the  old-time  sorrowful  exile  from  Zion 
— "  If  I  forget  thee,  O  Jerusalem,  let  my  right  hand  forget  her  cun- 
ning. If  I  do  not  remember  thee,  let  my  tongue  cleave  to  the  roof 
of  my  mouth  ;  if  I  prefer  not  Jerusalem  above  my  chief  joy  " 


LIFE  A  DREAM 


Delivered  at  the  Park  Church,  Hartford  April  23,  1882. 


Surely  every  man  zvalketk  in  a  vain  shew. — Psalms  xxxix,  6. 

It  is  a  thought  of  the  Bible,  and  has  come  to  be  one  of  the 
common  thoughts  of  men,  that  this  life  of  ours  is  a  dream,  though 
the  manifold  validity  of  that  comparison  is  not  ordinarily  reasoned 
out.  I  propose  to  reason  it  a  little  and  to  show  that  life  is  a  dream, 
not  only  in  those  respects  which  the  most  attract  attention,  but  in 
others  quite  as  significant  and  morally  impressive. 

And  first,  it  is  so  because  it  is  so  fleeting.  That  is  one  of  the 
points  mainly  thought  of  when  men  say,  Life  is  a  dream.  Some- 
thing has  happened  to  admonish  them  of  its  brevity.  Some  death 
has  occurred.  They  have  had  their  attention  called  to  some  struct- 
ure like  the  pyramids  of  Egypt,  which  are  thousands  of  years  older 
than  the  Christian  era,  and  in  the  shadow  of  their  perpetuity,  the 
years  of  a  man  have  seemed  as  nought.  Or  they  have  contemplated 
the  cycles  through  which  some  of  the  orbs  of  the  sky  travel  and  the 
still  more  enormous  movements  of  the  banded  constellations,  and 
then  have  turned  to  man,  to  be  struck  by  the  contrast  of  his  soon- 
completed  career.  In  the  fall  of  1869,  I  spent  a  couple  of  weeks 
in  Heidelberg,  Germany,  and  I  recollect  one  night  there,  when  the 
full  moon  hung  in  the  sky  over  that  mediaeval  poem,  the  old  Castle 
on  the  mountain,  I  spent  a  long  time  in  the  open  air  looking  up  to 
both  and  thinking  many  things.  And  among  those  things,  this 
reflection  continually  returned.  In  yonder  castle,  moonlit  and 
shadowy  and  old  and  desolate,  there  were  pomps  and  merry-makings 
and  the  round  of  high  life  and  busy  life,  before  Columbus  discovered 
America,  and  around  it  ofttimes  raged  the  thunder  of  war ;  those 


520  SERMONS. 

merry  makings  are  hushed,  those  noises  of  war  have  died  away,  the 
participants  therein  are  all  asleep  in  the  grave,  and  other  generations 
who  followed  them  in  long  succession  are  all  likewise  asleep  in  the 
sleep  that  knows  no  waking.  And  yet  there  stands  the  castle  ;  dis- 
mantled and  broken,  to  be  sure,  and  touched  all  over  by  the  ravages 
of  time  and  the  stormy  passions  of  men  ;  but  there  for  substance, 
and  a  type  of  the  unchangeable,  after  all ;  there  like  the  mountain 
height  on  whose  slope  it  hangs,  there  like  the  Neckar  which  flows 
forever  at  its  feet ;  and  as  I  considered  this,  gradually  my  own 
existence  seemed  to  narrow  to  a  hand's  breadth,  and  I  understood 
anew  that  saying  of  the  Psalmist — "  they  are  as  a  sleep  :  in  the  morn- 
ing they  are  like  grass  which  groweth  up.  In  the  morning  it  flour- 
isheth  and  groweth  up  ;  in  the  evening  it  is  cut  down,  and  withereth." 
And  surely,  none  the  less  did  that  same  feeling  of  my  own  transient- 
ness  impress  me,  when  I  lifted  my  eyes  above  the  castle  and  marked 
that  rounded  moon  riding  there  in  her  glory,  old  as  the  creation  is 
old,  and  full  of  memories  of  the  morning  thereof,  and  yet  as  fresh  and 
young  and  luminous  as  though  set  in  the  firmament  that  very  night 
for  the  first  time.  When  I  consider  thy  heavens,  O  God,  the  moon 
and  the  stars,  which  thou  hast  ordained  ;  what  is  man,  whose  breath 
is  in  his  nostrils  and  whose  days  are  as  a  watch  in  the  night. 

Life  is  a  dream,  I  say,  because  like  a  dream  it  speedily  vanish- 
eth  away.  That  is  a  phase  of  the  matter  which  strikes  everybody ; 
and  it  is  that  phase  of  the  comparison,  I  suppose,  that  very  obvious 
phase,  which  caused  the  thought,  Life  is  a  dream,  to  come  into 
such  universal  currency  in  the  thinking  and  the  speech  of  men. 

But  secondly  now,  consider  how  brokenly  our  minds  are  con- 
nected with  the  external  world  in  dreams,  and  in  what  an  incomplete 
and  confused  way  we  grasp  that  world  therefore.  In  deep  sleep 
our  relations  to  things  external  are  utterly  cut  off  and  we  do  not 
dream  at  all,  and  the  world  is  as  though  it  were  not ;  but  in  dreams, 
the  things  about  us  do  have  some  hold  on  our  senses,  and  that  hold 
of  theirs  is  the  reason  that  we  dream.  Some  uneasiness  in  our 
bodies  starts  our  minds  off.  Some  noise  on  the  highway,  some 
distant  roll  of  rail-trains,  some  dropping  of  this  or  that  in  our  rooms, 
some  spoken  word,  some  touch  of  some  hand — any  one  of  hundreds 
of  things,  may  so  far  reach  into  our  sleeping  faculties  as  to  set  them 
dreaming.  But  the  point  I  am  after  just  now  is,  that  we  have  no 
clear  and  intelligible  comprehension  of  the  realities  about  us.  Those 
realities  press  upon  us  sufficiently  to  originate  thought  within  us  and 


SERMONS.  521 

determine  its  character  in  some  measure,  but  not  sufficiently  to 
force  themselves  into  our  consciousness  as  external  realities.  A 
very  curious  fact.  In  my  waking  hours,  if  an  object  reaches  my 
mind,  straightway  and  inevitably  my  mind  travels  out  to  consider 
that  object,  and  that  is  the  way  in  which  I  become  aware  of  the 
universe  and  do  look  at  it  as  it  really  is  ;  but  when  that  same  object 
impinging  upon  me  causes  me  to  dream,  my  mind  does  not  arise 
up  and  follow  out,  and  on  that  object  locate,  but  contrariwise,  it  stays 
within  itself  and  moves  about  in  all  sorts  of  fantastics. 

And  right  here  I  discover  a  parallel,  viz  :  as  the  dreaming  mind, 
although  in  actual  connection  with  an  environing  world,  has  no 
distinct  perception  of  that  world  ;  so  through  all  this  earthly  life  of 
ours  we  are  surrounded  and  pressed  upon  by  a  spiritual  world,  of 
which  we  have  but  a  very  broken  and  insufficient  perception.  It 
has  some  access  to  us.  It  starts  motions  in  us  which  we  should 
never  have  otherwise,  but  those  inward  motions  thus  started  we  do 
not  often  track  out  and  forth  to  their  spiritual  and  supersensible 
causes — not  naturally  at  least ;  we  dream,  those  great  actualities  make 
dreams  in  us.  God  gets  at  us  and  into  us,  enough  to  start  us  off  in 
that  way,  and  angels  do,  and  scores  of  wafts  and  hearsays  from  the 
invisible  do,  and  in  our  better  moments,  doubtless,  we  make  a  push 
outward  into  perception  (spiritual  perception)  and  become  aware 
of  that  other  realm ;  but  in  whatever  moment  and  however  much 
inspired  and  put  on  our  best,  our  sense  of  those  outlying  things  is 
fragmentary  and  vacillating  and  dream-like.  So  that  when  we  die 
and  are  literally  carried  over  among  them,  it  will  be  considerably 
like  waking  up  from  the  dreaminess  of  sleep,  and  we  shall  say  to  our- 
selves— "Well,  here  is  that  world  that  I  often  guessed  at,  and  often 
saw  in  scattered  and  straggling  rays  of  light,  but  oh  !  what  a  different 
and  vaster  world  it  is  than  I  had  anticipated ;  how  vividly  real  all 
these  things  now  are  ;  the  unseen  personages,  how  visible  they  are 
and  how  near  to  me  they  come  and  into  what  intermingling  with 
them  I  find  myself  flowing ;  what  countless  spiritual  relations  of  all 
earthly  events  I  now  discover,  what  outstretching  perspectives,  what 
encompassing  spiritual  sceneries ;  I  am  awake,  I  am  awake  !  I 
dream  no  longer  ;  the  reign  of  fantasy  and  hallucination  is  over  and 
the  reign  of  the  real  has  come." 

I  may  add  here,  that  while  our  present  relations  to  the  super- 
natural sphere  are  thus  dream-like,  our  relations  even  to  earthly 
things  and  affairs  are  a  good  deal  so.  The  materialistic  scientists 
34 


522  SERMONS. 

think  that  when  they  have  denied  and  excluded  the  supernatural, 
and  cut  us  off  from  the  intellectual  Mightiness  incident  to  excursions 
and  explorations  in  that  imaginary  range,  and  have  brought  us 
sharply  down  to  the  physical  domain,  they  have  established  us  in 
solid  and  reasonable  perception  ;  but  nothing  is  plainer,  on  a  careful 
and  candid  scrutiny,  than  that  these  material  actualities,  in  which 
they  imprison  us,  have  spread  over  them  more  or  less  of  illusion, 
and  are  grasped  by  us,  at  best,  in  only  a  fluctuating  and  partial 
manner.  The  scientists  themselves  have  demonstrated  the  partial 
character  of  our  comprehension  of  the  material,  by  their  doctrine  of 
what  they  call  "the  relativity  of  knowledge,"  which  is  this  : 

That  all  we  know  of  external  objects  is,  that  they  produce  in  us 
certain  states  of  consciousness  by  virtue  of  their  adjustment  to  us,  as 
where  a  body  gives  us  a  sense  of  color  and  form  and  hardness ;  but 
this  our  sense  of  color,  form  and  hardness,  gives  us  no  information 
as  to  the  essence  and  substance  of  that  object  in  which  these  several 
qualities  inhere  ;  and  outside  of  the  power  of  that  physical  object  to 
impress  us  in  that  threefold  way  and  make  us  say,  "  lo  !  it  is  red,  it 
is  round,  it  is  hard,"  it  may  have  a  dozen  other  powers,  and  a  dozen 
other  attributes,  perceptible  to  the  Creator  if  not  to  us ;  so  that  the 
universe  in  its  entirety  is  to  the  universe  as  perceived  by  us,  almost 
as  God  to  the  vision  of  an  inspired  man  is,  as  compared  to  the 
vision  of  him  which  a  brute  has. 

That  is  the  doctrine  of  the  relativity  of  knowledge.  And  it 
shows,  I  say,  that  in  our  present  condition,  the  most  real  of  things 
— even  those  things  on  which  our  eyes  look — are  conceived  by  us 
only  in  certain  phases  of  their  total  reality. 

I  spoke  too,  of  physical  things  and  all  tangible  affairs,  as  held 
in  our  conception  only  with  much  fluctuation,  and  is  not  that  so  ? 
Take  a  boy's  view  of  his  visible  surroundings  and  of  the  flow  of 
human  events,  and  compare  it  with  his  view  of  the  same  things  when 
he  gets  to  be  thirty  years  old,  or  compare  his  view  at  thirty  with  his 
view  at  three-score  and  ten.  Why,  the  difference  is  immense.  The 
things  looked  at  are  substantially  the  same,  but  the  person  who 
looks  is  the  same  at  no  two  points  in  his  life.  The  old  man  looks 
back  to  his  childhood  and  comments  on  his  notions  of  things  then 
as  ridiculously  inadequate  and  incorrect ;  for  example,  his  view  of 
his  friends,  or  his  view  of  what  is  possible  in  life,  or  his  view  of 
the  general  lot  of  man,  or  his  view  of  death  and  eternity. 

But  his  youthful  judgments  were  not  more  ridiculous  than  his 


SERMONS.  523 

present  old-man's  judgments  are,  as  measured  by  the  realities  of 
things.  The  old  man  thinks  that  his  large  experience  of  life  has  put 
him  in  possession  of  life  as  it  is  \  but  what  life  really  is,  cannot  be 
known  by  him  till  he  comes  into  possession  of  all  its  relations ;  just 
as  a  student  of  history  cannot  understand  any  given  period,  until  he 
looks  into  the  times  antecedent  out  of  which  that  period  sprung,  and 
into  the  times  subsequent  into  which  that  period  has  flowered  forth. 

All  these  things  lead  me  to  say,  friends,  that  our  comprehen- 
sion even  of  the  present  world  and  the  thousand-fold  motion  of  its 
affairs  is  changeful,  inaccurate  and  incomplete.  We  see  them  bro- 
kenly, fitfully  and  unreally ;  and  in  that  respect  we  are  as  men  in 
dreams. 

Thirdly,  there  is  another  particular  in  which  this  life  that  we 
are  now  living  may  reasonably  be  called  a  dream.  You  know  that 
in  dreams  no  amount  of  absurdity  surprises  us.  We  float  through 
the  air,  and  we  take  it  as  a  matter  of  course  and  a  thing  no  stranger 
than  walking.  We  see  persons  in  our  presence  changing  from  one 
to  another  in  an  instant ;  our  neighbor  becomes  suddenly  our  other 
neighbor,  our  father  transforms  into  some  hero  of  history,  and 
these  transformations  excite  no  wonder  in  us.  Also  the  scenes  of 
our  dreaming  change  from  one  locality  to  another,  thousands  of 
miles  apart,  and  that  seems  natural.  Also  events  succeed  each  other 
in  the  wildest  incoherency,  and  in  the  midst  of  it  all,  it  does  not 
once  occur  to  us  that  anything  disorderly  is  going  on.  Thus  mar- 
velous are  the  dream-movements  of  the  mind. 

And  similar  to  that  are  the  waking  notices  we  take  of  the  things 
now  about  us.  The  forms  of  the  preposterous,  the  disorderly,  the 
chaotic,  in  this  life  are  countless.  The  base  succeed,  that  is  pre- 
posterous and  disorderly.  Criminals  escape.  The  good  are 
crushed.  Benevolence  brings  persecution.  Industry  ends  in  pov- 
erty. The  wise  are  despised.  Plotters  catch  their  victims.  Thrones 
of  evil  are  in  honor.  Religion  is  hooted  at.  Guile  works  better 
than  straightforwardness.  Jesus  is  crucified.  Windiness  passes  for 
oratory.  Sense  passes  for  dullness.  Occasional  touches  and  gleams 
of  a  lost  moral  order  there  are  of  course,  but  on  the  whole,  or  largely 
at  any  rate,  confusion  is  king  and  the  general  run  of  things  is  to  all 
points  of  the  compass  at  once,  as  though  the  laws  of  the  creation  had 
gone  mad  and  were  now  ramping  every-whither.  It  is  the  topsy- 
turvy of  a  dream.  And  yet  we  contemplate  it  much  as  in  dreams 
we  contemplate  those  incoherencies  and  impossibilities  and  weird 


524  SERMONS. 

shiftings  and  incredible  whimsicalities,  to  which  I  referred.  We 
take  it  as  a  matter  of  course  and  as  though  it  were  a  sort  of  orderli- 
ness, that  every  moral  incongruity  should  start  up  and  every  sort  of 
preposterousness  come  to  the  front.  In  our  dream  we  fly  through 
the  air  and  no  bird  could  do  it  better,  and  that  seems  to  us  the 
normal  motion  ;  likewise  in  our  life-dream,  myriads  of  flyings  through 
the  air  occur,  and  we  not  merely  do  not  marvel  at  it  but  we  expect 
it.  Tis  a  piece  of  dreaming,  and  blessed  be  God,  like  all  dreaming, 
it  cannot  last.     We  shall  awake  and  rationality  shall  at  last  prevail. 

I  do  not  know  how  far  I  might  pursue  this  analogy  of  life  a 
dream,  but  I  will  not  mention  many  particulars  more. 

Fourthly,  it  is  remarked  upon  in  the  books  of  science ;  and 
very  likely  you  have  noticed  the  same  in  your  own  experience,  that 
often  and  often  (and  perhaps  more  often  than  any  way),  the  con- 
science, in  dreams,  is  suspended  ;  so  that  the  best  of  people  commit 
the  most  savage  of  crimes  without  the  first  stroke  of  remorse. 

And  I  suggest  that  similarly  in  waking  life,  we  are  often  as 
those  who  dream.  Conscience  retires,  and  we  are  left  to  run  wild 
in  things  reprehensible,  without  any  clear  consciousness  of  what  we 
are  about.  We  cheat  and  steal,  and  seem  only  to  be  diligently  pur- 
suing our  business.  We  lie,  and  think  that  we  must.  We  masquer- 
ade in  all  sorts  of  hypocrisy,  and  call  it  courtesy  and  prudence.  We 
grind  the  face  of  the  poor,  and  call  it  "the  survival  of  the  fittest." 
We  deny  the  existence  of  God  and  teach  men  so,  and  then  feel 
persecuted  because  everybody  does  not  treat  us  as  though  we  had 
done  no  such  thing.  We  squirm  around  and  beslime  ourselves  in 
politics,  and  consider  such  doings  the  necessary  and  defensible 
means  of  success.  We  are  moral  dreamers.  But  some  day  we  shall 
awake.  This  cannot  last,  we  were  not  made  to  be  forever  dream- 
ing. Illusion  is  fascinating,  but  in  the  universe  of  God,  only  that 
which  is  real  can  abide. 

And  this  reminds  me  to  say,  lastly,  that  as  in  dreams,  when  we 
awake  and  look  back  we  are  filled  with  many  feelings,  so  in  the  final 
waking  from  this  dreamful  life  many  agitations  will  seize  us. 

In  the  first  place,  we  shall  be  filled  with  wonder  at  the  mistakes 
we  made  down  here.  We  had  agonizings  here  which  we  shall  then 
see  had  no  foundation  in  fact.  A  friend  of  mine  told  me,  that  in 
his  youth  he  was  bathing  alone  on  the  shore  of  the  ocean  and  swim- 
ming out  freely  and  far,  in  what  he  supposed  to  be  a  safe  movement, 
when,  on  looking  back,  he  found  that  a  secret  underflow  had  been 


SERMONS.  525 

drifting  him.  Thereupon  he  turned  and  made  a  struggle  coastward. 
He  was  a  first-class  swimmer  and  he  made  headway,  but  the  way 
was  long  and  the  tide  was  ugly,  and  finally  he  could  do  no  more. 
Then  he  solemnly  committed  his  soul  to  God,  ceased  striving  and 
sunk — and  touched  bottom  in  not  more  than  two  or  three  feet  of 
water.  For  a  considerable  stretch,  while  he  was  slowly  verging 
towards  death,  there  right  under  him  had  been  the  solid  ground. 

And,  my  friends,  just  so  delusive  as  that,  are  a  large  part  of  the 
great  anxieties  and  terrors  of  life.  They  are  dream-born.  There  is 
nothing  in  them.  They  are  night-mares.  We  drown  in  waters  two 
feet  deep.  We  fall  off  from  precipices  where  there  are  no  precipices. 
We  are  run  down  by  rail-trains  of  our  own  imagining.  We  are 
caught  in  whirlwinds  that  have  no  wind  in  them.  We  are  struck  by 
thunder-bolts  that  have  neither  thunder  nor  bolt.  And  we  shall  see 
it  to  be  so  from  heights  of  the  hereafter,  and  we  shall  draw  a  long 
breath  of  amazement  when  we  see. 

Moreover,  we  shall  draw  another  long  breath  when  we  discover 
the  many  instances  here  below  where  we  paddled  about  calm-minded 
in  seeming  two-feet  waters  that  were  miles  deep ;  and  walked 
serenely  on  dizzy  edges,  not  knowing  the  precipices  below  us ;  and 
marched  along  through  alluring  forest  paths  full  of  delight  and  song, 
when  a  hundred  ambushes  were  set  for  us  on  either  hand. 

A  time  of  much  marveling  will  our  eternal  waking  be. 

A  time  of  much  sorrowing  too,  perhaps, — sorrow  that  we  did 
not  know  our  day  of  privilege,  sorrow  that  we  did  not  discern  our 
obligations  to  others,  sorrow  that  we  wandered  and  wasted  our 
time,  sorrow  that  we  looked  not  beyond  our  mortal  and  transient 
estate,  sorrow  that  with  the  love  of  God  all  the  while  over  us,  like 
a  motherly  brooding,  we  did  not  more  see  God's  face  and  feel  his 
breath  and  detect  his  gentle  hand,  but  did  rather  conduct  ourselves 
like  orphaned  children,  and  cry  and  worry  and  put  forth  our  little 
potherings  of  effort  and  self-help. 

A  time  of  much  sorrowing  will  the  eternal  waking  be. 

A  time  of  much  rejoicing  also,  of  course,  as  I  have  already 
intimated.     Yea,  a  time  of  many  things. 

And  why  should  good  men  dread  to  fall  asleep  in  death,  that 
they  may  pass  to  the  eternal  awakening? 

I  do  not  know  that  death,  in  itself,  is  any  more  remarkable  than 
sleep ;  or  that  passing  into  a  state  of  personal  existence  beyond 
death,  is  any  more  inherently  incredible  than  that  passing  into  the 


526  SERMONS. 

dream-state  of  which  we  have  all  had  so  much  experience.  A  man 
dead  gives  no  more  sign  of  knowing  nothing  than  does  a  man  fully 
asleep,  and  a  man  dreaming  is  as  far  out  of  his  customary  state  of 
mind  as  a  man  can  be  in  eternity.  What  a  baseless  thought  it  is, 
that  an  existence  for  us  beyond  this  present,  is  not  a  thing  easy  to 
be  believed,  when  millions  of  times  every  day  people  are  experienc- 
ing changes  as  great  as  that.  Not  merely  do  we  pass  into  uncon- 
sciousness by  disease  and  by  blows  and  by  the  daily  process  of  sleep  ; 
and  not  only  do  we  daily  and  normally  pass  into  states  of  dreaming  ; 
but  in  many  instances,  men  broad  awake  have  ceased  to  be  them- 
selves, (that  is  to  themselves,  they  have  ceased  to  be) ,  have  lost 
their  identity  and  gone  over  into  a  new  self-consciousness,  and  in 
that  amazing  new  consciousness  have  figured  for  a  time.  According 
to  the  accounts  given,  there  was  a  case  like  that  to  the  eastward  of  us 
not  long  ago.  A  clergyman  suddenly  became  another  man  to  him- 
self, and  wandered  off  in  a  brand-new  identity  and  did  things  utterly 
at  variance  with  his  former  character,  just  as  a  new  man  ought, 
— and  all  that  he  did  was  as  of  a  new  man.  It  was  as  though  I 
should  be  instantly  annihilated  here  and  now,  and  a  new-created 
personality  should  be  put  into  my  place  and  my  tracks. 

Well,  with  these  profound  personal  changes  possible  and  fre- 
quently occurring,  why  should  we  hesitate  to  accept  that  idea  of 
transformation  -at  death,  which  the  Scriptures  give  us,  and  that  very 
transformed  life  beyond,  of  which  they  speak  in  such  plain  terms  ? 
For  one,  I  do  not  hesitate.  I  believe  all  that  the  Scriptures  say.  I 
see  no  reason  why  I  should  not.  I  see  strong  reasons  why  I  should. 
And  I  am  glad  the  eternal  transformation  is  coming.  I  have  been 
into  dreamland.  I  have  been  into  unconsciousness  a  great  many 
times,  and  now  and  then  some  brother  man  of  mine  has  shown  me 
what  it  is  to  change  identity ;  and  now  I  am  ready  to  see  a  more 
joyful  thing  than  these  all  (more  joyful  though  not  more  wonderful) 
and  to  take  on  the  attributes  and  put  forth  the  phenomena  of  an 
absolutely  spiritualized  existence.  It  will  not  be  unconsciousness, 
but  consciousness.  It  will  not  be  dreaming,  but  the  widest  waking. 
It  will  not  be  a  mysterious  change-off  into  an  absolutely  new  man, 
like  that  wandering  clergyman  ;  but  it  will  be  a  sufficiently  new  man, 
brimful  of  recollection  and  all  aglow  within  and  ablaze  with  a  sense 
of  indestructible  identity.  I  do  not  know  but  some  people  fancy 
that  the  river  death  will  prove  a  Lethe  for  us,  wherein  all  our  memory 
of  earth    will   be    submerged    bottomlessly ;    but   there   seems   to 


SERMONS.  527 

be  no  Scripture  for  that  notion  to  stand  on, — and  why  should  the 
redeemed  children  of  God  want  any  such  submergence,  which,  while 
it  drowns  out  of  us  all  recollection  of  our  mistakes  and  our  sins,  to 
be  sure,  does  also  drown  out  of  us  the  life-long  sweet  mercies  of 
God.  A  purely  unhistorical  heaven,  a  heaven  in  a  state  of  absolute 
severance  from  earth  by  the  deluging  of  Lethe,  might  have  in  it 
some  conceivable  felicities,  just  as  some  plants  are  able  to  flower 
without  any  rootage  in  any  soil  and  simply  in  the  air ;  but  the  most 
robust  and  strong-flavored  growths  and  the  most  enduring  blooms 
stand  in  the  earth  and  draw,  day  by  day,  upon  its  generosity, 
transmuting  its  dull  particles  into  life  and  its  dark  mould  into  beauty. 
And  so  our  heaven  shall  reach  back  into  our  earth-life,  and  by 
transmutations  inconceivable  of  most  unpromising  elements  here 
furnished,  shall  build  itself  up  in  I  know  not  what  luxuriances,  and 
shed  abroad  I  know  not  what  fragrances,  and  glorify  itself  in  I  know 
not  what  eternal  beauty. 


THE  TRANSIT  OF  VENUS. 


Delivered  at  the  Park  Church,  Hartford,  Dec.  io,  1S82. 


The  heavens  declare  the  glory  of  God. — Psalms  xix,  1 . 

I  watched  the  transit  of  Venus,  last  Wednesday  with  very  great 
interest,  as  millions  more  did.  But  in  addition  to  that,  I  noticed  in 
myself  all  day  a  curious  proneness  to  tears  over  the  matter,  as 
though  there  were  some  elements  of  pathos  in  it  hidden  away  some- 
where ;  and  at  last  I  was  led  to  analyze  the  subject  and  see  whether 
there  really  was  any  occasion  for  a  full-grown  and  more  or  less 
hardened  man  to  cry,  because  Venus  had  arrived  on  time  and  was 
exhibiting  herself  as  well  as  she  could  on  the  great  disk  of  the  sun. 

Of  course,  I  did  not  fail  to  suggest  to  myself  that  I  was  prob- 
ably in  a  more  than  common  state  of  impressibility  in  mind,  or  in 
body,  or  in  both — in  both  most  likely ;  for  those  two  are  marvel- 
ously  intertwined  and  interdepended,  so  that  if  the  mind  com- 
mences an  agitation  by  reason  of  some  stroke  upon  it  (some  sudden 
idea,  some  anxiety,  some  sorrow,  some  delight)  straightway  the 
body  is  drawn  into  a  sympathetic  participation ;  and  on  the  other 
hand,  if  the  body  receives  some  strong  impression,  its  mate  and 
other  self  in  here,  faithful  as  a  mountain  echo,  is  analogously  im- 
pressed. It  is  a  wonderful  thing,  this  dual  constitution  of  ours, 
with  its  back-and-forth  of  mutuality,  and  doubtless  some  day,  that 
is  in  our  resurrection  embodiment,  we  shall  see  still  more  wonderful 
things  in  the  way  of  reciprocity  and  unification  of  soul  and  body. 
And  in  that  coming  state  also,  these  our  days  of  exceptional  sensi- 
bility, when  everything  takes  hold  of  us  mightily,  will  be  exceed- 
ingly multiplied,  so  that  whenever  we  are  overtaken  by  an  event,  or 
a  special  flow  of  circumstances,  or  an  inrush  of  thought,  our  entire 


SERMONS.  529 

being  will  vibrate  and  thrill  to  its  deepest  deeps.  Is  it  not  pitiful 
that  those  moods  of  high  receptivity  do  not  come  to  us  now  more 
frequently  than  they  do,  so  that  we  need  not  let  ten  thousand 
striking  things  go  by  without  receiving  any  stroke  from  them  ? 

But  secondly,  while  studying  my  own  case,  I  did  not  forget 
that  all  sorts  of  excitement  reveal  themselves  in  tears  as  their  natural 
language.  Joy  weeps  as  instinctively  as  sorrow  does.  All  the 
world  around,  and  among  all  races,  that  is  so.  A  vision  of  celestial 
beauty  will  make  us  weep.  A  strain  of  music  will  do  it.  And  it 
does  not  need  to  be  minor  music,  either.  A  sudden  fright  will  do 
it.  A  sudden  relief  from  a  heavy  burden,  a  seeing  of  some  person 
whom  we  had  not  expected  ever  to  see  again,  a  first  sight  of  a  dis- 
tinguished man,  or  of  a  celebrated  country,  or  of  a  famous  building, 
or  of  a  hallowed  grave,  will  do  it.  Tears  are  Nature's  waste-pipe, 
when  her  emotions  of  whatever  kind  are  at  full  flood,  and  can  no 
longer  be  endured  ;  so  that  if  you  see  a  person  crying,  you  cannot 
tell  whether  it  is  because  he  is  very  sad,  or  very  glad,  or  whether  it 
is  not  both  together ;  after  the  manner  of  this  much-mixed  human 
life  of  ours.  We  are  fearfully  and  wonderfully  made,  and  it  is  no 
egotism  if  we  make  ourselves  our  frequent  study  and  contemplation. 
A  man,  be  it  yourself  or  another,  is  a  masterpiece  of  God's  hand ; 
and  oh  !  how  much  he  can  suffer  and  how  much  he  can  enjoy. 
How  much  he  does,  and  how  much  he  will.  It  seems  now  as  if 
our  emotions  were  infinite  ofttimes,  but  what  do  they  amount  to  in 
comparison  with  the  infloodings  that  shall  fill  us  in  the  life  which  is 
to  come ;  when  our  souls  are  expanded  to  the  uttermost,  when 
every  chord  in  us  is  sharp-strung,  when  everything  we  see  is  clearly 
seen,  when  God  lets  in  on  us  his  whole  contribution  of  thoughts 
and  things.  O  !  that  exquisite  and  profound  life  and  living  !  God 
help  us  when  we  get  into  it. 

But  all  these  words  are  preliminary,  and  I  ask  now  directly, 
was  there  anything  pathetic  in  that  great  fact  in  the  sky,  last 
Wednesday?     Yes,  there  was. 

That  punctual  re-appearance  of  the  orb  was  our  God  tenderly 
mindful  of  the  welfare  of  his  creation.  Not  merely  was  it  not  in 
his  heart,  that  the  general  frame-work  of  things  should  precipitately 
break  up  in  a  crash  not  possible  to  be  conceived,  but  his  feeling 
would  not  permit  him  to  introduce  the  slightest  jar,  with  its  general 
consternation.  So,  at  the  instant  his  long-wandering  creature  was 
due  at  the  sun's  eastern  edge,  he  had  her  there,  solid  and  true  ;  she 


530  SERMONS. 

had  been  careering  through  space,  she  had  felt  the  pull  of  many 
other  worlds  as  she  traveled  their  vicinity,  she  had  looked  off  into 
God's  bright-peopled  vastness  and  had  felt  the  fascination  of  many 
fascinating  creatures  like  herself,  and  there  is  no  telling  what  those 
miscellaneous  allurements  might  have  accomplished  ;  but  her  Maker 
was  her  friend,  and  our  friend,  and  so  she  left  not  her  path  for  a 
second,  but  bore  straight  on  to  her  goal  and  across  the  blazing  sun  ; 
and  when  she  could  no  longer  stay,  she  careered  forth  upon  her 
endless  journey  to  fulfill  her  cycles  as  aforetime  and  accomplish  her 
beautiful  eccentricities,  and  keep  up  her  one  full  and  sweet  voice  in 
the  everlasting  harmonies  of  the  sky.  It  may  well  bring  tears,  that 
our  God  is  so  loving,  steadfast  and  punctual,  on  every  post,  outpost 
and  hinge-point  of  his  universe.  It  is  the  boundless  tenderness  in 
him,  I  say,  which  makes  him  uphold  these  innumerable  concurrences 
everywhere.  It  is  because  he  remembers  his  living  creatures  who 
swarm  his  worlds  and  hang  upon  his  providence,  the  men,  angels 
and  archangels,  the  unintelligent  creatures  who,  although  unintelli- 
gent, are  capable  of  weal  and  woe  ;  and  the  beings  we  never  heard 
of  who  very  likely  populate  these  stars,  planets  and  constellations 
which  fill  all  space. 

And  these  fidelities  of  his  in  the  firmament  suggest  to  us  his 
more  minute  fidelities,  near  at  hand  ;  as  his  hearing  the  ravens  when 
they  cry,  his  providing  for  every  living  thing,  his  embellishment  of 
the  flowers,  his  shepherding  of  all  the  bleating  folds,  his  care  for 
little  children  and  for  the  helpless  and  the  old.  Oh  !  it  is  precious 
that  he  is  all  around  us  so,  and  so  concerned  for  us,  and  so  sleepless, 
and  so  condescending,  and  so  strong,  and  so  full  of  plans  for  our 
good,  and  so  patient  with  us,  and  so  communicative  in  various  ways 
in  order  that  we  may  not  miss  him  or  mistake  him.  In  our  night- 
times of  sadness  we  hear  him  speaking  to  us.  In  our  great  weak- 
ness we  feel  the  touch  of  his  dear  hand  of  strength.  In  our  sinnings 
we  receive  the  benediction  of  his  mercy.  In  our  heart-brokenness 
he  brings  us  his  balms.  And  when  we  swoon  under  our  inevitable 
death-stroke,  his  rod  and  his  staff  they  comfort  us. 

And  while  speaking  of  his  tenderness,  as  brought  to  our  minds 
by  his  law-keeping  habit  in  the  sky,  it  is  well  to  recollect  how  very 
serviceable  to  us  it  is,  that  he,  as  being  thus  law-keeping  and  orderly, 
is  perfectly  calculable  in  his  ways.  All  our  practical  affairs  rest 
securely  on  the  fact  that  he  can  be  counted  on  forever.  The  things 
he  has  always  been  doing,  he  is  sure  to  keep  on  doing,  and  we 


SERMONS.  531 

adjust  our  life  to  that.  We  conform  our  business  to  his  ever 
punctual  hours.  We  appoint  our  assemblies  according  to  the 
motion  of  this  his  earth.  We  arrange  our  sleep  according  to  the  stead- 
fast recurrence  of  his  nights.  We  put  in  our  crops  in  sure  trust  of 
his  season.  We  build  our  water-wheels  according  to  the  foreseen 
flow  of  his  rivers.  We  fix  our  hour  of  battle  by  the  punctuality  of 
his  day-breaks.  We  make  ten  thousand  engagements  with  each 
other  on  the  supposition  that  he  will  keep  his  engagements  in 
nature ;  that  is,  that  he  will  maintain  his  natural  laws.  Indeed, 
all  human  life  would  go  into  instant  chaos  if  we  could  not  foreknow 
what  he  will  do,  on  and  on. 

And  what  I  note  in  all  this  is  the  pathos  of  it.  That  he,  so 
great,  should  serve  us  in  these  innumerable  ways  of  use,  that  he 
should  thus  eternally  bind  himself  to  our  necessity,  especially  when 
almost  none  of  us  treat  him  as  we  ought ;  it  makes  a  great  appeal 
to  a  man's  feeling,  and  sometimes  brings  tears  to  his  eyes,  if  he  has 
any  possibility  of  tears  in  him. 

Another  touch  of  the  pathetic  that  I  found  in  the  occurrence 
of  last  Wednesday  was  this  : 

In  their  watch-towers  in  this  city,  and  in  numerous  other 
places  far  and  near  where  the  planet  was  likely  to  be  visible,  were 
inquiring  men ;  mere  midgets  in  the  immensity  of  the  universe, 
straining  their  eyes,  and  concentrating  their  brains,  if  peradventure  by 
the  labor  of  them  all  together,  some  item  of  new  information  might 
be  gained  for  the  groping  mind  of  man.  It  reminded  me  of  the 
ignorance  and  the  wondering  and  the  constant  question-asking  of 
little  children,  who,  as  but  just  arrived  in  these  parts,  cannot  know 
much,  but  must  push  on  and  on  through  many  years  of  search — 
and  the  ignorance  of  children  is  always  touching  in  numbers  of 
ways.  It  seems  pitiful  that,  with  so  much  to  know,  there  is  so  little 
they  can  know.  It  melts  one  to  notice  in  what  an  unforeknowing 
and  unsurmising  way  they  move  on  towards  the  full  reality  of  life. 
It  seems  to  them  thus  and  so,  but  we  know  it  is  neither  thus  nor  so. 
Life  is  more  sad  than  they  think,  and  life  is  more  delightful  than 
they  think.  Life  has  more  outreaching  relations  than  they  can 
imagine.  And  it  has  more  opportunities.  And  it  leads  on  to  more 
unbounded  personal  expansions.  Why,  if  they  could  see  themselves 
as  they  will  be,  before  they  die,  they  would  be  utterly  dazed  at  the 
sight.  I  find  myself  continually  amazed  at  myself  because  I  am  so 
different  from  the  me  of  only  a  few  years  ago — everything  looks 


532  SERMONS. 

larger  to  me  and  more  tremendous ;  joy  does  and  sorrow  does ; 
God  does  and  man  does ;  time  does  and  eternity  does ;  truth  is 
greater  and  error  is  greater ;  the  kingdom  of  God  is  more  and  the 
kingdom  of  Satan  is  more  ;  and  this  greatening  of  all  things  before 
my  eyes  makes  me  also  seem  greater  to  my  own  self.  And  so,  I 
say,  children  could  hardly  live  through  it,  if  life  as  it  is  should 
suddenly  come  before  them. 

But  even  men  are  but  children  by  any  large  measurement.  As 
Tennyson  has  expressed  it : 

"Behold,  we  know  not  anything; 
I  can  but  trust  that  good  shall  fall 
At  last— far  off— at  last,  to  all, 
And  every  winter  change  to  Spring. 

So  runs  my  dream  :  but  what  am  I  ? 
An  infant  crying  in  the  night : 
An  infant  crying  for  the  light : 
And  with  no  language  but  a  cry." 

These  astronomers,  with  their  glasses  set,  represent  us  all. 
How  little  they  know.  How  much  they  want  to  know.  With  what 
endless  energy  they  try.  How  sad  it  is  that  the  universe  evades 
them  so  almost  uniformly.  With  what  a  feeling  of  mingled  amuse- 
ment and  pain  the  higher  intelligences  of  God  must  look  down  on 
their  puny  explorations.  We  could  weep  for  them,  and  for  our- 
selves, that  the  utmost  sweep  of  the  telescopes  reaches  only  the 
fringe  of  things,  the  suburbs  of  the  universe,  the  outlying  and 
hithermost  realities. 

Still  again,  I  think  it  is  pathetic  to  observe  how  the  sympathy 
of  the  whole  family  of  man  rallied  about  those  astronomic  explorers 
last  Wednesday,  scattered  up  and  down  several  continents.  Great 
unanimity  of  excited  feeling  is  always  impressive,  whatever  the  occa- 
sion. It  may  be  a  multitude  of  people  listening  to  some  eloquent 
speaker.  It  may  be  a  whole  sisterhood  of  nations  simultaneously 
watching  the  death-struggle  of  a  single  man.  It  may  be  a  people 
waiting  the  daily  expected  return  of  some  fleet  sent  out  for  dis- 
covery. It  may  be  a  mass-meeting  of  Christians  all  aglow  with 
some  great  theme  of  God.  It  may  be  some  single  community 
touched  by  a  sudden  panic.  Many  are  the  forms  of  the  phenome- 
non, I  say,  but  it  overwhelms  one  always  to  mark  an  innumerable 
interflow  of  hearts.     And  when  the  organized  numerous  populations 


SERMONS.  533 

of  mankind,  now  so  separated  and  so  built  up  in  diversiform  and 
contrary  habits  of  thought,  feeling  and  action,  are  brought  into  the 
concord  of  heavenly  love  ;  and  when,  moreover,  our  means  of  inter- 
communication shall  be  perfected,  so  that  the  total  family  of  man 
can  almost  instantaneously  be  organized  and  concentrated  on  any 
given  point,  we  shall  see  consolidations  of  live  feeling  on  the  grand- 
est scale,  and  whoever  weeps  now  from  excess  of  emotion  when  he 
merely  sees  certain  hosts  of  people  keeping  step  and  shouting  in  a 
common  enthusiasm  over  a  few  men  of  science  attacking  the  old 
secrets  of  the  sky,  will  then,  if  he  be  an  observer  of  things  here 
below,  find  himself  in  such  a  conflagration  of  feeling  as  is  hard  to 
conceive. 

The  pathos  of  sympathy  !  The  pathos  of  sympathy  !  See  it 
in  the  circle  of  home-love.  See  it  at  the  burial  and  at  the  bridal. 
See  it  in  the  Thanksgiving  home-coming.  See  it  in  the  outbursting 
of  patriotic  peoples.  See  it  in  all  the  thousand-fold  play  of  human 
hearts.     And  thank  God  for  it. 

Another  element  of  pathos  which  I  succeeded  in  finding 
in,  or  getting  out  of,  the  occasion  of  last  Wednesday,  came  from 
the  suggestion  it  made  to  me  ;  First,  that  we,  as  truly  as  the  planets, 
are  under  unchangeable  law,  moral  as  well  as  physical,  which  law 
we  have  unanimously  broken ;  and  secondly,  that  this  inexorable 
lot  of  ours  has  been  tempered  by  interfusions  of  grace,  even  to 
the  extent  of  law-suspensions,  and  law-ruptures  ;  as  where  Jesus 
Christ,  in  whom  all  grace  heads  and  organizes  and  dispenses  its 
benefactions,  was  born  abnormally,  and,  once  here  and  fairly  at 
work,  did  interject  not  unfrequent  miracles  into  the  universal  awful 
structure  of  law. 

First,  as  to  our  lot  under  the  reign  of  law,  is  it  not  heart- 
breaking to  notice  a  person  disabled  for  life  by  even  an  inadvertent 
transgression  of  some  physical  fiat,  or  one  dying  by  a  disease  which 
reached  him  by  contagion,  or  a  child  ruined  by  the  very  love  of  his 
mother,  or  a  man  of  great  benevolence  paralyzed  by  overwork  in 
behalf  of  his  fellow-men,  or  a  kind-hearted  boat's-crew  drowned 
while  pushing  off  through  the  waves  to  deliver  a  ship's  company? 
God,  in  nature,  is  terrible  at  this  point.  He  does  not  discriminate 
between  his  friends  and  his  foes.  He  slays  a  little  child  as  soon  as  a 
ruffian.  He  bears  on,  and  spares  not  everywhere.  In  the  case  of 
planets,  it  is  beautiful  that  they  are  under  law — beautiful  for  them 
and  beautiful  for  us,  and  beautiful  for  all  fellow-orbs.     They  do  not 


534  SERMONS. 

know  enough  to  break  law,  but  move  on  with  a  brute  blindness  for- 
ever. We  are  endowed  more  highly  and  more  terribly.  We  are 
given  minds  and  wills  and  impulses,  and  then  are  left  free  to  in- 
dulge them  or  not.  And  we  indulge  them.  We  drink  poisons. 
We  overfeed.  We  overwork.  We  exaggerate  our  push  of  busi- 
ness. We  plot  plots.  We  are  untruthful.  We  cherish  revenges. 
Taking  us  altogether,  we  break  all  the  laws  of  God.  And  it  makes 
one  weep  to  see  how  the  laws  turn  on  us.  We  are  sorry  for  what 
we  have  done,  but  that  does  no  good.  In  the  physical  depart- 
ment it  does  no  good.  We  repent.  We  cease  from  poisons,  we 
cease  from  carnality,  we  slacken  work,  we  do  as  well  as  we  know 
how,  but  our  disobediences  more  or  less  pursue  us  so  long  as  we 
live.  Even  the  incoming  of  grace  does  not  alter  that.  That 
sickly  Christian  man  whom  you  see  is  very  dear  to  God  now,  but 
that  sickliness  abides.  He  is  working  out  one  of  God's  unchange- 
able penalties.     A  most  impressive  and  melancholy  fact. 

But  not  more  melting  in  its  way  is  this  other  fact ;  that 
this  law-enforcing,  almighty,  eternal  One  diverges  at  points  from 
this  straight-forward,  appalling  march  of  his,  under  the  impulse  of 
his  love,  diverges  and  lets  in  mercy  among  these  forty-thousand 
inexorabilities,  something  as  though  Venus  on  her  way  should  be 
bidden  to  turn  out  for  some  man's  benefit.  God  turned  out  from 
his  indivertible,  old  path-keeping,  and  sent  his  Son  among  us  by 
an  unprecedented  approach  ;  and  in  many  another  sign  and  won- 
der he  turned  aside.  When  he  quelled  the  waves  of  Gallilee  he 
did.  When  he  raised  Lazarus  he  did.  When  he  rolled  away  the 
stone  from  the  tomb  of  Jesus  he  did.  In  fact,  when  he  had  once 
turned  aside  in  the  incarnation  of  his  Son  by  the  Holy  Ghost  and 
the  Virgin  Mary,  he  inaugurated  a  whole  series  of  exceptions  to  the 
unchangeability  of  law — and  you  and  I  are  living  in  the  daily  benefit 
of  this  exceptionalism.  And  I  want  to  say  again  and  keep  it  before 
you,  that  when  God  thus  arrests  himself  in  his  customary  mode  of 
action,  because  his  creature,  man,  will  be  eternally  ruined  if  he 
keeps  on,  the  sight  is  very  impressive  upon  our  feeling,  if  so  be 
that  we  are  open  to  receive  it  and  let  it  impress  us.  It  is  as  when 
great  and  celebrated  men  turn  aside  for  a  little  child,  humor  him, 
listen  to  his  complaints,  show  an  interest  in  his  play,  invent  games 
for  him,  spend  time,  neglect  their  work,  safeguard  him,  plan  for  his 
future,  obey  his  whims  and  act  as  though  they  were  his  born  slaves. 
How  often  we  see  that,  and  what  a  sweet  appeal  it  makes.     So  our 


SERMONS.  535 

Heavenly  Father ;  he  turns  aside.  He  suspends  his  great  laws. 
He  bends  himself  low  and  listens  to  us  and  waits,  and  puts  up  with 
our  foolishness,  and  considers  our  troubles,  and  introduces  a  dis- 
tinct element  of  motherliness  into  the  steadfastness  and  rigor  of  his 
fatherhood.  And  some  of  the  most  heart-warming  passages  of 
Holy  Writ  are  those  that  dwell  on  this  very  thing. 

I  do  not  wish  to  make  a  wrong  impression  in  relation  to  the 
miraculous  in  the  administration  of  God,  and  I  therefore  pause  right 
here  long  enough  to  say  that  it  is  not  necessary  to  the  idea  of  a 
miracle  that  it  should  be  considered  outside  of  all  law ;  but  only 
that  it  should  be  a  visible  interruption  of  the  laws  of  nature  as 
known  by  us,  and  established.  It  has  often  been  thought,  and,  in  fact, 
it  has  been  the  prevailing  conception,  that  a  miracle  is  God  taking 
a  sudden  start  and  acting  on  an  impulse,  a  gush  of  feeling,  as  you 
might  say  ;  an  unreasoned  and  undeliberated  and  unprevised  play 
of  his  own  personal  freedom.  The  miraculous  has  been  made  to 
seem  more  sensational  by  this  view  of  it.  It  has  been  supposed 
that  by  that  view  miracles  have  been  more  utterly  separated  from 
the  orderliness  of  law,  and  the  dullness  of  orderliness. 

It  is  one  of  the  benefits  of  the  modern  scientific  and  natural- 
istic attack  on  the  whole  doctrine  of  the  supernatural,  that  Christian 
thinkers  have  been  driven  to  lay  a  strong  stress  on  the  thought — 
likely  to  be  admitted  by  all  considerate  and  candid  persons  so  soon 
as  stated — that  God's  miracles  are  only  a  part  of  his  general  order- 
liness, and  get  their  eccentricity  and  their  sensational  appeal  to  the 
notice  of  men,  much  as  the  tremendous  charges  of  electricity,  silent 
and  invisible  in  our  thunder-clouds,  appall  the  world  by  darting 
through  our  atmospheres  with  a  rending  that  makes  everything  roar. 
We  think  of  the  electricity  as  all  orderly  and  under  law  so  long  as 
it  stays  up  there  in  the  clouds  ;  but  the  forth-leaping  and  the  flash- 
ing and  the  thundering  are  just  as  orderly,  and  law-full.  In  like 
manner,  I  say,  God's  movement  in  upon  our  visible  realm,  in  that 
irruptive  event  which  we  call  a  miracle,  is  a  law-keeping  movement 
— only  the  law  which  he  keeps  just  then  is  the  law  of  a  higher  realm, 
even  the  supernatural.  It  is  the  supernatural  flashing  through  the 
atmosphere  of  the  natural,  and  irresistibly  arresting  the  attention  of 
mankind.  It  is  incredible  that  God  should  ever  act  in  fits  and 
starts ;  that  is,  in  ways  fundamentally  incongruous  with  his  general 
way  of  acting,  which  general  way  as  we  all  know  is  uniformity,  or 
law. 


536  SERMONS. 

I  pass  now  to  a  final  thought.  I  have  been  speaking  of  what 
seemed  to  me  the  pathetic  aspects  of  that  great  event  in  the  firm- 
ament the  other  day,  with  the  effort  of  the  civilized  world  to  note 
it  accurately  and  make  a  good  study  of  it.  I  leave  that  now  to 
remark  on  another  point. 

Our  exceptional  interest  in  the  transit  of  Venus  was  attributable 
in  part  to  the  unprecedented  way  in  which  our  attention  had  been 
called  to  it  for  quite  a  time  beforehand.  It  reminded  me  of  an 
Easter  service  which  I  attended  at  St.  Peter's,  in  Rome,  where  the 
great  multitude  in  the  building  were  worked  up  into  the  most  in- 
tense expectancy  by  a  long  waiting,  and  by  the  boom  of  signal  guns 
and  other  striking  foretokens  and  heraldings  scattered  along  at  in- 
tervals through  the  waiting.  By  the  time  the  Pope  entered  with  his 
shining  ecclesiastical  procession  through  the  wide-swung  doors  of 
the  church,  we  were  in  a  state  of  impressibility  that  needs  to  be 
felt  to  be  understood.  Likewise  the  transit ;  it  had  been  announced  ; 
the  newspapers  of  the  world  had  discussed  it ;  specialists  had  pub- 
lished explanatory  articles  ;  the  habits  of  the  planet  and  its  previous 
doings  for  centuries  had  been  spread  out ;  the  dependence  of  future 
astronomic  calculations  on  the  precision  of  our  observations  of  this 
coming  phenomenon  had  been  brought  to  the  public  attention  ;  and, 
to  farther  sharpen  our  eagerness,  a  band  of  foreign  men  had  selected 
our  city  as  a  good  spot  on  which  to  set  up  their  instruments,  and 
their  daily  doings  as  they  carefully  made  ready  for  the  critical  day, 
had  been  diligently  and  sympathetically  reported.  Venus  was 
enormously  advertised,  and  the  result  was,  she  had  such  a  world- 
wide assembly  of  witnesses  and  wide-awake  friends  as  she  never  had 
before. 

And  in  my  discursive  thoughts  on  the  whole  great,  miscellane- 
ous occasion,  I  could  not  help  remembering  what  our  forth-going 
into  the  eternal  life  will  be,  and  our  first  opening  of  our  eyes  upon 
the  scenes  thereof,  in  view  of  the  fact  that  during  our  whole  life 
here  we  have  been  having  our  attention  called  to  it ;  by  innumer- 
able readings  of  the  Bible,  by  innumerable  sermons,  by  myriads  of 
references  to  it  in  books  and  journals,  by  many  death-scenes,  by 
many  bereavements,  by  many  cities  of  the  dead  which  we  have 
noticed,  and  by  the  constant  spontaneous  play  of  our  primal  instincts 
unable  to  turn  away  from  the  fascination  of  that  vast  Obscure,  and 
home-land  of  all  human  populations.  What  will  it  not  be  to  see  the 
men  there  of  whom  we  have  so  often  heard.     What  will  it  be  to  see 


SERMONS.  537 

the  once  earth-bound  and  crucified  Redeemer  of  our  souls,  whose 
name  has  been  in  half  our  thoughts  from  the  cradle  to  the  grave. 
What  will  it  be  to  see  at  last  exactly  what  that  four-square  magnifi- 
cent city  is  which  John  describes  ;  what  that  green  land  with  its  milk 
and  honey  and  wine,  what  the  throne  of  God  and  the  Lamb,  what 
the  praises  day  and  night  of  the  multitude  redeemed,  what  the  far- 
stretching  hosts  of  immortals  not  earth-born,  what  the  throne  of 
Judgment,  and  the  Judgment  searchings  and  dooms  and  divisions, 
what  the  voices  in  which  they  speak  there  and  the  bodies  they  wear, 
and  the  communications  and  communions  wherein  they  indulge, 
what  the  rememberings  and  forgettings,  and  whether  there  be  forget- 
tings  at  all  !  How  many  thousands  of  times  our  attention  has  been 
called  to  these  things,  how  often  we  have  prayed  about  them  and 
imagined,  how  often  in  the  long  night  hours,  our  minds  more  awake 
than  in  the  day,  we  have  expatiated  in  that  field,  how  often  in  sick- 
ness with  possible  de°,th  before  us  we  have  followed  the  same  theme  ; 
our  mother  taught  us  in  it,  our  familiar  hymns  sung  of  it — indeed 
all  our  earthly  experience  has  been  telegraphically  woven  together 
with  those  realities,  along  countless  wires  strange  thrills  have  come, 
and  distant-sounding  voices,  and  articulations  obscure  and  unnatural, 
as  though  our  faculties  were  not  yet  adjusted  to  that  somewhat ; 
and  now,  at  last,  to  be  bolted  into  those  much-heralded  things, 
what  must  the  eagerness  of  it  be  ! — and  the  wide  amazement  and  the 
confused  energizings  of  our  powers  put  upon  a  sudden  effort  to  make 
themselves  at  home  in  an  untried  condition.  What  must  it  be  to  the 
astronomers  to  throw  away  their  instruments  and  search  the  universe 
with  vision  purged  and  triumphant !  God  has  great  surprises  for  us. 
Great  surprises  !  Great  surprises,  of  course,  in  the  sense  that  much 
not  expected  by  us  will  come,  but  quite  as  great  on  this  ground  also, 
that  things  long  expected  startle  us  for  the  very  reason  that  they 
have  been  long  expected  and  dwelt  upon.  Many  times  death  has 
been  long  foreseen,  but  it  is  apt  to  be  a  surprise  to  bystanders, 
nevertheless,  when  it  really  arrives.  And  in  the  same  way  and  for 
the  same  reason,  our  arrival  in  the  Hereafter  will  be  charged  with  wet- 
eyed  wonders  and  sweet  astonishments. 

Brethren,  I  feel  that  there  is  less  than  my  usual  unity  in  the 
remarks  which  I  have  made  this  morning.  But  I  have  this  to  com- 
fort me,  that  many  times,  in  discourses  of  the  utmost  unity,  the  good 
gained  by  different  persons  listening  comes  from  single  sentences 
and  single  thoughts  that  are  no  essential  part  of  the  substance  and 
35 


538  SERMONS. 

general  movement  of  the  discourse.  I  would  not  make  that  an 
argument  for  a  scattering  and  unorganized  treatment  of  subjects; 
but  only  a  solace  when,  for  any  reason,  one  happens  to  fall  into 
scattering. 


MODERN  INSPIRATION. 


Delivered  at  the  Park  Church,  Hartford,  April  15,  1883. 


The  Second  Chapter  of  1st  Corinthians. 

It  seems  strange  that  many  Christians  make  so  little  as  they  do 
of  the  direct  inspiration  of  God  in  souls.  They  seem  to  admit  with 
all  their  hearts  that  there  was  any  amount  of  that  kind  of  thing  in 
Bible  times ;  that  Prophets  had  it,  that  the  Patriarchs  had  it,  that 
the  twelve  Apostles  had  it,  that  the  hundreds  of  miracle-workers 
had  it,  that  Simeon  had  it,  and  Mary,  the  Blessed  Virgin,  and  all 
preachers  of  the  Bible  day,  and  hosts  besides  mentioned  in  Holy 
Writ ;  and  especially  that  all  the  persons  who  wrote  the  Bible  had 
it  to  such  an  extent,  that  in  the  writing  they  fell  into  no  mistake — 
at  any  rate,  into  no  important  mistake.  So  much  as  that  they  freely 
say,  but  the  moment  we  undertake  to  bring  them  down  beyond  the 
Bible  date  and  establish  inspiration  as  an  all-time  gift — all  time  as 
truly  as  any  time — they  make  a  stand  and  set  up  the  distinct,  affir- 
mation, that  the  inspiration  of  those  first  men  was  quite  unique  and 
solitary,  and  must  never  be  looked  for  again.  That  inspiration  was 
for  a  special  purpose,  which  purpose  was  fulfilled  forever,  and  now 
we  have  the  Bible  for  our  guidance  and  need  nothing  else.  That  is 
their  doctrine. 

And  now  I  ask  : — Whence  comes  this  impulse  of  denial  m 
Christian  people,  and  why  is  it  they  will  not  consent  that  we  shall 
have  in  our  natures,  the  God  of  Abraham,  Isaac  and  Jacob,  the  God 
of  the  Apostles  and  the  Bible  writers  and  five  hundred  more,  of 
whom  the  Bible  says,  that  they  had  God?  What  great  interest  is 
going  to  suffer  by  the  wide  shedding-abroad  of  the  idea  of  modern 
inspiration?     Well,  first, 


540  SERMONS. 

The  era  of  the  coming  of  Jesus  into  our  world  was  an  unprece- 
dented era,  and  was  therefore  accompanied  by  unprecedented 
tokens.  Christ's  advent,  in  the  nature  of  things,  was  unrepeatable, 
and  might  well  be  marked  by  unrepeatable  phenomena ;  like  herald 
angels  in  the  sky,  and  supreme,  supernatural  impressions  on  many 
minds,  and  gifts  of  tongues,  and  raisings  of  the  dead,  and  a  whole 
special  inrush  of  marvels.  And  in  so  far  as  the  epoch  was  peculiar 
and  was  attended  by  peculiar  manifestations,  that  furnishes  some 
show  of  ground  for  those  moderns  to  stand  on,  who  insist  that  those 
first  inspirations  were  local  and  transient. 

In  like  manner,  the  supernaturalisms  of  the  Old  Testament  may 
be  explained  upon — and  are  explained  upon.  They  were  special,  it 
is  said.  They  appertained  to  special  occasions.  They  bore  on 
special  ends.     They  naturally  ended  when  the  occasions  were  past. 

That  is  the  first  thing  I  should  mention  in  explanation  of  the 
idea  held  by  so  many,  that  inspiration  is  not  a  permanent  gift.  I 
am  not  arguing  the  point  quite  yet,  but  if  I  were  I  should  say  right 
here,  that  while  we  must  admit  that  signal  times  and  occasions 
naturally  call  for  signal  demonstrations,  and  while  we  must  admit 
that  such  an  occasion  as  the  advent  and  such  a  period  as  the  three 
active  years  on  earth  of  the  Lord  Jesus,  were  abundantly  signal  and 
did  coruscate  with  particular  splendors  such  as  may  not  be  seen  in 
our  period,  nevertheless  in  the  one  underlying  great  fact  of  God  con- 
versable with  men  then  and  there,  that  time  had  no  advantage  over 
any  others,  (ours,  for  example).  I  mean  to  say,  God  is  always  in 
converse  with  men,  directly  so,  in  one  way  or  another,  and  the  only 
thing  that  specializes  any  one  time  in  that  regard  is  the  form  in 
which  that  converse  is  carried  on.  In  Israel  of  old,  God  chose  to 
approach  men  in  visibility ;  in  the  Shekinah  located  in  the  Holy  of 
Holies  in  the  temple,  and  somehow,  by  the  breast-plate  of  the  High 
Priest,  he  conversed  with  man;  but  when  his  eternal  Son  arrived  in 
our  world,  the  Shekinah  faded  away  and  the  speaking  breast-plate 
was  dumb.  But  God  had  not  withdrawn  and  utterly  given  up  his 
intimacy  with  his  creatures,  on  that  account.  On  the  contrary,  he 
was  more  among  them  than  ever  and  more  in  them.  In  like  man- 
ner, at  the  advent  of  Jesus,  a  new  order  of  supernatural  converse 
was  inaugurated,  the  most  luminous  and  comfortable  ever  seen  up 
to  that  time  ;  but  when  Jesus  ascended  into  heaven,  that  particular 
order  ceased  and  a  new  era  swept  in,  the  greatest  of  all,  even  the  era 
of  the  Holy  Ghost,  and  God  settled  himself  down  upon  that,  as  his 


SERMONS.  541 

final  order — and  it  is  in  that  era  that  we  are — and  what  I  say  about 
it  is,  that  there  is  as  much  God  in  this  last  order,  God  with  men, 
God  in  men,  God  inbreathing,  inworking,  ingenerating  and  inwardly 
speaking,  as  in  any  other  the  world  ever  saw.  And  when  Christian 
people  lift  up  the  Bible  times  as  the  conspicuous  times  in  all  history, 
in  the  matter  of  God  present  with  men,  they  stick  fast  in  phe- 
nomena, and  do  not  run  back  to  their  underlying  ground.  The 
ground  fact  is, — God  always  in  converse  with  men ;  the  manifesta- 
tion of  that  fact  may  be  the  Shekinah,  or  the  speaking  seer,  or  a  sud- 
denly appearing  angel,  or  the  visible  return  of  a  dead  man,  (like 
Moses  and  Elias  on  the  mount  of  Transfiguration),  or  the  impres- 
sive night  dreams  of  Joseph  and  Mary,  or  the  dropping  dead  of 
Ananias  and  Sapphira  because  they  had  lied,  or  the  dove  and  voice 
at  the  baptism  of  Jesus,  or  the  rushing  wind  and  cloven  tongues  of 
fire  and  polyglottic  speech  on  a  certain  day  of  Pentecost,  or  the  sub- 
sidence of  the  bestormed  sea  under  the  command  of  Jesus,  or  the 
highly  flitting  and  apparitional  appearances  of  the  risen  Lord  /or 
some  forty  days,  or  the  powerful  indwelling  of  the  Holy  Ghost  in 
Matthew,  Mark,  Luke  and  John  and  Paul,  Peter,  James  and  Jude, 
when  they  wrote  the  several  books  of  the  Bible. 

Secondly — still  explaining  the  infidelity  of  Christian  people — 
I  remark,  that  the  thought  of  God  close  to  men  and  inspiring  them, 
now  as  truly  as  aforetime,  is  made  uncongenial  to  many  by  that 
great  and  prolific  study  of  nature  which  distinguishes  these  modern 
times.  Before  Science  had  commenced  her  movement  in  that  field, 
devout  men  found  it  easy  to  recognize  the  nearness  of  God  in  all 
things, — even  his  immediate  nearness ;  and  in  the  writings  (espe- 
cially the  poetic  writings)  of  all  primitive  and  unphilosophical  peo- 
ples, you  will  notice  a  vivid  sense  of  God  in  all  things  and  events ; 
a  superstitious  sense  of  him  we  are  accustomed  to  say  in  our  wise 
manner,  it  being  superstitious,  in  our  view,  to  ascribe  to  a  super- 
natural personal  agent  any  phenomenon  which  can  be  explained  on 
natural  principles,  (or  in  other  words,  on  the  principle  of  second 
causes) .  In  our  explorations  of  nature,  and  of  the  workings  of  the 
human  mind,  and  of  the  on-go  of  all  visibilities,  we  have  discovered 
that  between  God,  the  great  first  cause,  and  the  phenomena  which 
we  contemplate,  there  are  millions  of  subordinate  and  intermediate 
causes,  and  this  interposition  of  intermediates,  you  see,  pushes  God 
back  a  little  (possibly  a  good  deal),  from  his  old,  supposed  imme- 
diacy and  close  quarters  with  us  ;  and  in  many  cases  men  get  him 


542  SERMONS. 

so  far  off  that  it  is,  to  their  feeling,  practically  as  though  he  were 
obliterated  ;  and  in  the  case  of  many  Christians,  God  is  made  to  be 
so  remote  by  the  doctrine,  the  true  doctrine,  of  second  causes, 
that  his  living  hold  on  them  is  weakened,  and  when  you  come  to 
preach  to  them  of  God  in  men,  for  all  sorts  of  working  and  practical 
purposes,  in  a  literal  hand-to-hand  converse  and  management,  they 
incline  to.  pooh-pooh  it  and  to  set  up  the  fiction  that  God  is  on 
earth  pouring  in  his  personal  inspirations,  on  great  occasions  only, 
and  only  in  ancient  times.  The  primitive  and  unrefiective  peoples 
were  more  nearly  right  than  these  Christians  are.  These  interven- 
ing second  causes,  of  which  so  much  is  made  and  on  which  so  much 
dependence  is  placed  for  explaining  the  things  we  see  in  nature  and 
in  mind,  are  simply  God's  instruments  for  effecting  his  purposes ; 
instead  of  operating  by  his  own  visible  hand,  he  stands  back  and 
throws  into  the  foreground  and  keeps  playing  there  these  forty 
thousand  finite  forces,  physical  and  other ;  which  forces,  in  so  far 
as  they  are  physical,  scarcely  deserve  to  be  called  forces,  because  in 
themselves  they  have  no  efficiency,  but  are  only  God's  absolutely 
inert  tools. 

But  I  must  not  get  myself  too  deeply  involved  at  this  point.  I 
have  no  time  to  go  the  whole  length  of  it.  I  only  want  to  say  that 
our  modern  view  of  the  creation  as  full  of  second  causes,  is  one 
explanation  of  the  fact  that  so  many  disincline  to  accept  God  in  any 
sort  of  immediacy.  Whatever  may  have  been  in  Bible  times,  there 
is  no  such  thing  now,  they  think. 

A  third  cause  of  this  denial  of  God  present  and  within  us,  is 
the  frequent  absurdity  of  the  people  who  do  admit  the  theory  of 
divine  inspirations,  both  modern  and  ancient,  and  modern  as  much 
as  ancient ;  and  not  only  admit  the  theory,  but  offer  their  own  selves 
as  instances  of  such  inspiration.  Not  long  ago,  in  Rhode  Island,  a 
father  and  mother  killed  their  little  girl,  because  God  told  them  to, 
they  said,  just  as  he  told  Abraham  to  slay  Isaac.  God  did  not 
speak  to  them  audibly,  but  he  did  a  thing  as  authentic  as  that,  in 
that  he  irresistibly  impressed  their  devout  and  docile  minds.  Mysti- 
cism has  made  a  great  figure  in  Christian  history,  and  in  heathen 
history  as  well,  and  mysticism  is — what?  It  is  the  doctrine  of 
interior,  divine  inspiration,  this  very  doctrine  for  which  I  am  plead- 
ing, a  doctrine  indispensable  to  the  life  of  the  Church ;  but  of 
course,  when  men  get  pretty  full  of  it  they  easily  edge  along  into  the 
feeling  that  the  inner  light  in  each  man's  soul  is  all  the  light  there 


SERMONS.  543 

is  that  is  01  any  special  consequence ;  and  when  they  get  to  that, 
some  of  them  will  be  sure,  by  and  by,  to  do  something  pretty  ridic- 
ulous or  pretty  dreadful.  Witness  the  killing  of  that  child — as 
honest  an  act  as  was  ever  performed,  I  suppose.  Witness  the  high 
and  mighty  doings  of  the  Salvation  Army,  (so  called)  in  Europe. 
Witness  the  extravagant  asceticism  of  thousands  in  all  ages  and  all 
religions,  who  have  retired  from  the  world  and  fasted  and  tormented 
themselves  to  gain  the  inner  light.  Witness  William  Cowper  and 
many  more,  who  thought  God  came  to  them  in  distinct  voices  in 
the  night. 

But  here  you  may  ask  me  :  Do  not  these  flightinesses  of  mysti- 
cism show  that  the  doctrine  of  God's  direct  light  in  the  mind  is  a 
false  doctrine  ? — and  to  this  I  reply,  No.  But  they  show  that  that 
doctrine  needs  to  be  supplemented  by  the  equally  true  doctrine  of 
external  guidance — by  the  Bible  and  human  advice,  and  a  study  of 
events,  and  a  diligent  exercise  of  our  common  sense  on  all  the  data 
furnished  us  in  every  case.  Mysticism  is  the  natural  antithesis  of 
externalism,  as  represented  in  Creeds  and  Ordinances  and  Priest- 
hoods and  Councils  and  infallible  Popes  and  Conventionalism  and 
so  on  ;  and  when  this  externalism  gets  to  be  excessive  and  too 
heavily  superincumbent,  so  that  liberty  and  individualism  and  all 
blessed  things  that  depend  on  these,  are  in  danger  of  their  life, 
mysticism,  sooner  or  later,  takes  the  field,  of  necessity,  and  taking  it 
under  those  very  express  and  exigent  circumstances,  it  goes  the  way 
of  all  reactions  and  develops  excesses  of  its  own  very  likely.  And 
then  there  will  arise  up  many  to  declare  that  all  light  is  in  the  Bible 
and  in  standards  external,  and  that  the  wonderful  movements  of  God 
in  souls,  inspirations  and  what  not,  ceased  some  eighteen  hundred 
years  ago. 

I  have  now  spent  time  enough  in  telling  how  the  notion  gets 
abroad,  that  divine  inspirations  have  ceased  in  the  main  and  must 
not  be  expected. 

Let  me  throw  out  two  or  three  considerations  in  opposition  to 
that  view.     And  first, 

The  Bible  teaches  in  many  a  passage,  that  it  itself  cannot  be 
effectually  understood  by  any  man,  except  by  the  direct  light  of 
God  in  the  mind ;  so  that  that  great,  infallible,  external  guide,  the 
Bible,  on  which  the  unmystical  man  so  grounds  himself,  is  made  to 
be  a  futility  in  the  main  after  all,  unless  the  fundamental  point  of 
mysticism,  the  thought  of  God  in  the  private  soul,  is  conceded. 


544  SERMONS. 

Hear  these  words  of  Jesus  himself:  "The  Comforter,  which  is  the 
Holy  Ghost,  whom  the  Father  will  send  in  my  name,  he  shall  teach 
you  all  things  and  bring  all  things  to  your  remembrance,  whatsoever 
I  have  said  unto  you."  Hear  this  also  :  "When  the  Spirit  of  truth 
is  come,  he  will  guide  you  into  all  truth."  And  this  :  "He"  (that 
is  the  Holy  Ghost)  "  shall  receive  of  mine  and  shall  show  it  unto 
you."  And  St.  Paul  tells  his  Ephesian  brethren,  to  whom  he  writes, 
that  he  is  continually  praying  for  them  that  God  "  may  give  unto 
them  the  spirit  of  wisdom  and  revelation."  And  to  the  Corinthians 
he  says  :  "the  things  of  God  knoweth  no  man,  but  the  spirit  of  God. 
Now  we  have  received  the  spirit  which  is  of  God,  that  we  might 
know  the  things  that  are  freely  given  to  us  of  God  ;  the  natural  man 
receiveth  not  the  things  of  the  Spirit  of  God."  And  much  more  to 
the  same  effect,  scattered  up  and  down  his  Epistles.  So,  with  the 
Bible  in  his  hands,  how  can  any  man  deny  the  inspiration  of  God  in 
souls  ?  The  Bible,  as  a  Book  of  salvation,  is  a  failure  unless  it  is 
supplemented  by  the  inner  light.      So  Jesus  and  his  Apostles  teach. 

Again,  men  in  all  generations  are  continually  coming  into  exi- 
gencies, where  the  Bible  is  not  a  sufficient  guidance — into  questions 
of  truth  and  questions  of  conduct  and  into  deep  waters  of  experience. 
The  ever-active  theologies  of  the  world  and  its  ever-active  science 
and  philosophy,  put  forth  theories  and  reasonings  that  we  are  to 
decide  upon,  on  which  there  is  no  written  "thus  saith  the  Lord," 
either  yea  or  nay.  The  theories  in  question  had  never  been  broached 
when  the  Bible  was  written,  or  if  they  had,  the  Book  does  not  refer 
to  them. 

And  then,  in  matters  of  conduct,  almost  every  day  of  our  lives 
we  feel  that  we  want  divine  direction  ;  and  sometimes  we  feel  that 
we  must  have  it  and  cannot  go  a  step  without  it,  the  interests  in- 
volved are  so  precious.  And  we  go  to  God  in  prayer  for  it.  And 
why  do  we,  if  inner  light  is  an  inadmissible  thought.  I  say  inner 
light,  not  inner  infallibility,  though  in  myriads  of  cases  the  light 
given  amounts  to  infallibility  in  this  sense, — that  it  saves  us  from 
mistake  actually  and  completely.  Infallibility  may  mean  that  a  man 
cannot  err,  (as  God  cannot,  and  as  his  earthly  vice-regent  it  is  sup- 
posed cannot),  or  that  he  does  not  err.  And  it  ought  to  satisfy  a 
practical  person  if  God  leads  him  so  that  he  does  not  err. 

Well,  these  emergencies,  I  say  !  these  practical  emergencies  of 
ours  !  Every  parent  has  them  in  the  handling  of  his  children.  He 
is  called  to  make  decisions  concerning  them,  on  which,  according 


SERMONS.  545 

to  appearances,  their  whole  destiny  will  turn.  It  is  some  matter  of 
their  education,  (where  they  shall  go  for  their  schooling  and  what 
they  shall  study)  ;  it  has  respect  to  their  companionships,  or  their 
vocation,  or  their  marriage,  or  their  church  relations,  or  some  con- 
stitutional infirmity  in  them,  or,  on  the  other  hand,  some  specially 
brilliant  aptitude  with  which  they  are  endowed.  And  that  parent's 
heart,  loving  to  the  last  degree,  dreads  to  deliver  a  judgment  full  of 
doom  for  creatures  so  dear,  and  flies  to  God  for  his  word  on  the 
subject.  Perhaps  he  goes  to  the  Bible,  that  written  word  of  God  ; 
but  more  likely  he  takes  what  Biblical  knowledge  he  already  has, 
and  what  familiarity  with  Biblical  principles  and  the  Biblical  spirit, 
and  with  those  things  in  his  mind  he  seeks  a  private  personal  inter- 
view with  God,  who  has  told  him  to  cast  his  cares  on  him,  and  in 
that  interview  he  begs  to  be  informed  what  to  do,  by  a  word  of 
information,  original,  explicit,  directed  to  him  and  nobody  else, 
made  for  the  occasion  and  covering  all  the  anxious  circumstances  of 
the  case.  If  he  be  a  religious  man,  if  he  believes  there  is  a  God, 
that  direct  march  into  his  presence  is  as  instinctive  and  inevitable 
as  a  thirsty  person's  search  for  water. 

And  business  men  are  often  under  a  similar  pressure.  They 
know  not  what  to  do.  The  data  furnished  them  are  insufficient  for 
a  solid  decision.  And  yet  a  decision  must  be  made — made  in  sim- 
ple guess-work,  as  the  case  stands ;  and  reasonable  beings  do  not 
like  to  go  by  guessing.  There  is  too  much  peril  in  it,  and  a  humil- 
iating lack  of  intelligence.  They  want  a  decision  that  has  sense  in 
it.  And  the  Bible  has  nothing  to  say  on  the  subject.  The  Bible 
tells  us  to  be  honest  and  lays  on  us  a  few  valuable  generalities  of  that 
sort,  but  it  does  not  speak  on  this  and  that  investment  which  you 
are  contemplating ;  it  does  not  give  you  its  mind  on  that  partner- 
ship you  are  thinking  to  form  ;  it  does  not  meet  you  with  its  clear 
and  detailed  word  on  most  of  the  peculiar  sets  of  circumstances  in 
which  you  find  yourself  placed,  sooner  or  later,  in  business  life. 

In  subjects  of  legislation,  also,  and  of  civil  administration,  men 
are  often  at  their  wit's  end.  For  example,  hear  Abraham  Lincoln 
say  in  our  days  of  war: — '-'If  anybody  in  hell  suffers  more  than  I 
do,  I  should  like  to  know  it."  His  public  cares  grew  to  be  almost 
intolerable.  He  felt  that  he  had  not  the  wisdom  necessary  for  the 
tremendous  situation  in  which  he  found  himself  placed,  as  the  civil 
and  military  head  of  this  sore-struggling  and  imperiled  republic. 

So  I  say,  our  life  on  earth  is  not  possible  to  be  lived  in  any 


546  SERMONS. 

quiet  of  mind,  on  Bible  guidance  only.  Our  questions  kill  us  ;  and 
our  mountainous  burdens  crush  us,  if  indeed  it  be  so  that  we  can 
have  no  God  in  our  minds  and  souls  and  hearts. 

Thirdly,  I  argue  the  reality  of  modern  inspirations,  on  the 
ground  of  experience.  There  are  millions  of  people  who  delightedly 
testify  of  God's  illuminations  in  them,  and  God's  warmths  and  God's 
strengthenings  and  God's  consolations.  At  this  point,  of  course  the 
rationalist  is  especially  festive  and  hilarious  with  his  objections. 
"  How  do  you  know  that  these  illuminations,  warmths,  strengthenings 
and  consolations  came  from  God  ?  "  he  says.  "You  are  fearfully  and 
wonderfully  made,  and  perhaps  they  bubbled  up  from  some  remote 
and  unsearchable  parts  of  your  own  constitution.  And  then  imagi- 
nation is  a  great  thing  in  men.  You  get  it  firmly  impressed  on  your 
mind  that  you  are  going  to  be  sick  in  a  certain  way,  and  you  will  be. 
If  you  believe  that  a  certain  star  can  be  seen  in  a  certain  part  of  the 
sky,  look  long  enough  and  you  will  see  it.  If  you  believe  that  there 
is  a  God  who  answers  prayer  and  produces  certain  feelings  in  souls, 
then  when  you  pray  you  will  surely  have  the  feelings,  more  or  less. 
Imagination  is  one  of  the  most  remarkable  endowments  ever  heard 
of.  Now,  how  do  you  know  that  your  experiences  are  of  God — 
your  lights  and  your  comforts  and  your  empowerments  and  your 
numerous  beautiful  upliftings?     How  do  you  know?" 

Well,  how  does  he  know  anything.  First  of  all,  by  the  exercise 
of  his  reason  on  evidence  presented.  But  secondly  and  more 
important,  all  his  knowledge  rests  at  last  on  his  capacity  of  intui- 
tion. That  is,  he  is  such  a  being  that  by  simply  looking  he  sees 
many  things.  Some  things  he  cannot  see  till  he  has  been  through 
a  reasoning  on  them,  but  some  things  he  can.  For  example,  while 
he  is  putting  in  these  lively  objections  of  his,  he  is  conscious  ot 
certain  processes  going  on  in  his  own  mind.  There  they  are  in  him 
and  he  sees  them.  He  does  not  see  them  by  the  help  of  argument 
on  evidence  presented,  but  he  sees  them  without  an  instant's  argu- 
ment. He  sees  them  as  clearly  as  though  he  had  argued  on  them 
a  thousand  years.  There  is  no  room  for  argument.  It  is  perfect 
knowledge  at  first  sight. 

Or  take  this  illustration.  Our  objector  looks  at  some  external 
object — a  human  face,  say.  Through  his  physical  eyes,  that  face 
produces  a  certain  impression  on  his  mind.  He  is  conscious  of  a 
mental  state  which  he  thinks  was  produced  by  that  face.  But  phil- 
osophic idealists,  like  the  famous  Bishop  Berkeley,  tell  him  that 


SERMONS.  547 

there  is  no  real  face  there.  This  impression  in  him  is  all  brain- 
work.  There  is  no  solid  external  world.  And  they  support  this 
view  by  various  ingenuities.  And  what  can  he  say  ?  Why,  only  one 
thing  which  men  always  have  said  against  idealism,  namely : — I 
intuitively  know  that  there  is  a  certain  mental  state  in  me,  and  I 
intuitively  infer  that  that  mental  state  is  an  impression  made  on  me 
by  yonder  real  face.  That  is  the  whole  extent  of  his  argument. 
And  there  is  no  argument  about  it.  It  is  simply  stubborn  affirma- 
tion, founded  on  consciousness  and  intuition.  And  all  human 
reasoning,  however  long-drawn,  complicated  and  convincing,  rests 
at  last  and  rests  continually,  (that  is  to  say,  at  every  step),  on  that 
corner-stone,  the  intuitive  affirmations  of  the  mind.  It  seems  more 
intellectual  and  more  nourishing  to  our  intellectual  conceit,  to  reason 
logic-wise  and  spin  out,  in  order  to  get  to  results,  but  in  reality 
direct  vision  is  our  most  consummate  and  startling  intellectual 
endowment,  even  as  God  is  all  vision  and  no  reasoning  ever  on 
any  subject. 

Well  now  how  does  a  godly  man  seeking  light  and  so  on  from  his 
God,  know, — first,  that  he  has  the  light,  and  next,  that  the  light  comes 
from  an  external,  great  light-giver  to  whom. he  has  prayed.  How 
does  he  know  it  ?  I  reply,  he  knows  by  consciousness,  that  light 
and  the  rest  are  in  him ;  and  he  knows  whence  they  came,  by  intu- 
itive inferences.  Of  course,  the  point  of  peril  in  this  business,  the 
point  where  mistake  is  most  likely  to  get  in,  is  that  intuitive  infer- 
ence. But  it  is  no  more  perilous  than  our  objector's  intuitive  infer- 
ence from  his  inward  impression,  to  that  external  face  which  I 
mentioned.  Berkeley  says  mistakes  do  come  in  just  there.  But 
ninety-nine  one  hundredths  of  mankind  resist  Berkeley  and  rest 
quietly  on  their  intuition  of  the  matter  in  this  calm  assurance,  each 
man  being  sufficient  unto  himself,  though  of  course  it  adds  to  his 
contentment  to  know  as  he  does  that  nearly  all  other  men  are  in 
the  same  assurance  with  him.  So,  when  a  man  tracks  his  own 
inward  experiences  out  to  God,  intuitively,  while  there  is  a  theo- 
retical possibility  that  he  is  mistaken,  yet  that  possibility  does  not 
weaken  his  conviction  that  he  is  right,  especially  when  he  finds  that 
all  pious  souls  that  ever  lived  have  been  accustomed  to  trace  their 
spiritual  experiences  to  God,  just  as  he  himself  does. 

And  that,  brethren,  is  what  I  have  to  say  to  you  on  the  reality 
of  modern  divine  inspirations,  as  proved  by  the  experiences  of 
believers. 


548  SERMONS. 

And  I  may  add  here,  without  dwelling  on  it,  that  these  alleged 
inward  workings,  have  authenticated  themselves  to  bystanders  and 
honest  observers,  in  instances  without  number.  "By  their  fruits, ye 
shall  know  them."  Look  at  the  marked  conversions  that  have 
occurred,  where  men  have  made  a  total  turn  and  a  turn  for  life. 
Look  at  the  patiences  and  the  forgivenesses  and  the  generosities  and 
the  magnanimities  of  all  kinds,  and  the  holinesses,  which  men  have 
exhibited,  in  attestation  of  the  idea  that  God  is  with  men  and  in 
men  and  working  in  them  as  truly  as  he  ever  was. 

The  last  thought  that  I  should  care  to  present  on  this  subject 
is,  that  if  it  be  granted  that  there  is  a  God,  and  a  God  who,  as  having 
created  us,  is  interested  in  us,  we  should  naturally  look  to  see  him 
seeking  an  access  to  souls,  to  help  them  ;  especially  as  human  souls 
are  in  an  evil  case  and  need  help — sometimes  awfully,  as  I  have 
explained  before.  His  fatherly  feeling  must  constrain  him  to  help, 
and  when  we  go  out  into  an  argument  to  show  that  he  actually  does 
help,  that  feeling  of  his  ought  to  create  in  us  a  continual  preposses- 
sion in  favor  of  the  thought  that  he  does  help.  It  is  a  peculiarity  of 
our  good  feeling  towards  persons,  that  we  like  best  to  help  them  in 
person,  rather  than  by  circuitous  and  impersonal  methods.  If  you 
endow  a  college  for  the  benefit  of  all  succeeding  generations  of 
students,  that  is  an  indirect  and  impersonal  gift.  You  do  not  dis- 
tinctly see  and  feel  the  ycung  people  you  are  assisting,  face  by  face 
and  name  by  name,  and  a  considerable  part  of  your  felicity  in  making 
the  gift  is  lost  therefore.  But  if  you  go  to  a  single  student  in  the 
privacy  of  his  room,  and  there  heart  to  heart  learn  of  his  needy  case 
and  put  your  assistance  by  your  hand  into  his  hand,  you  and  he  both 
are  magnetized.  There  is  nothing  so  warm  as  personal  care,  per- 
son dealing  with  person,  as  you  see  in  the  case  of  a  mother  doing 
for  her  children,  or  in  the  case  of  a  missionary  to  the  heathen,  who 
loves  his  heathen  much  more  than  we  do  who  pay  the  missionary's 
salary ;  while  the  heathen  on  their  part,  love  him  ten  times  more 
than  they  love  us,  who  sent  him  to  them  for  their  good. 

And  I  do  not  see  why  this  principle  may  not  hold  in  the  bene- 
factions of  God  to  men.  He  has  given  us  a  word  from  himself  in 
the  Bible.  And  he  is  doing  millions  of  things  for  us  by  second 
causes  and  by  messengers ;  but  how  can  his  feeling  be  thoroughly 
satisfied  by  these  ways  of  indirection,  and  how  can  we  on  our  part 
be  completely  drawn  to  him  in  these  ways  ?  It  is  not  possible.  The 
exigencies  of  his  feeling  and  of  ours  require  that  sort  of  personali- 


SERMONS.  549 

zation  which  is  secured  by  his  direct  interior  gifts  to  us,  his  gift  of 
light  and  his  gift  of  consolation  and  his  gift  of  strength  and  his  gift  of 
pardon.  We  want  to  feel  the  touch  of  his  hand,  and  his  love  cannot 
be  satisfied  till  we  do. 

My  brethren,  let  us  hold  to  God  imminent  in  souls  forever. 
All  good  men  are  inspired.  Thousands  of  inspired  sermcns  will  be 
preached  to-day.  Thousands  of  missionaries  are  inspired.  Bryant's 
Thanatopsis  was  inspired.  Charles  Wesley's  hymns  were  inspired. 
Lincoln's  speech  at  Gettysburg  was.  Mrs.  Stowe's  Uncle  Tom's 
Cabin  was.  Many  a  warrior  has  been,  many  a  statesman,  many  a 
philanthropist,  many  a  reformer,  many  a  mother  disciplining  her 
child,  many  an  injured  man  forgiving  his  enemies,  many  a  terribly 
poor  person  refusing  to  steal  when  specially  tempted  to  it.  Florence 
Nightingale,  John  Hampden,  John  Wesley,  John  Newton,  Emerson  ; 
the  whole  innumerable  company  of  God's  people,  great  and  small, 
all  have  had  their  moments  of  inspiration,  their  clear  visions,  their 
deliverances,  their  spiritual  liberties,  their  songs  in  the  night,  their 
God-born  hopes,  their  out-bursts  of  vigor,  their  lyrical  movements 
that  were  not  natural  to  them.  And  it  behooves  us  to  recognize 
these  possibilities  and  live  our  life  in  the  faith  of  them.  On  the  level 
of  naturalism  what  drudges  are  we.  On  the  high  up-lands  of  super- 
natural grace,  what  winged  creatures  we  are  and  to  what  superior 
destinies  we  move  on. 

Perhaps  some  one  here,  as  I  close,  would  like  me  to  answer  this 
plain  question  : — Wherein  does  the  inspiration  of  the  writers  of  the 
Bible  differ  from  the  inspiration  of  men  in  these  days  ?  Well,  I  will 
answer.  There  is  no  difference  in  kind  between  the  two  inspira- 
tions. None  at  all.  The  inspiration  of  the  author  of  the  Epistle  to 
the  Romans  and  the  inspiration  of  Rev.  Charles  Wesley,  author  of 
numerous  first-class  Christian  lyrics,  are  both  alike  God  breathing 
himself  into  men.  And  the  only  difference  possible  to  be  estab- 
lished between  the  writer  of  any  book  of  the  Bible  and  Charles 
Wesley,  in  the  matter  of  inspiration,  is  that  the  Bible  man  may  have 
had  a  higher  degree  of  the  one  and  same  inspiration  than  the 
modern  man  did.  I  say  may  have  had ;  by  which  I  mean  to 
imply,  perhaps  he  did  not.  It  requires  more  of  God's  inward  help 
to  write  some  things  that  Wesley  did,  than  it  required  to  write,  for 
example,  some  of  the  historical  portions  of  the  Bible,  (important  as 
those  histories  are) — though  on  the  other  hand,  no  Wesley  ever  rose 
to  a  point  where  he  could  delineate  the  future  ages,  as  the  Hebrew 


550  SERMONS. 

prophets  did,  or  could  achieve  St.  John's  out-burst  of  mighty  reveal- 
ings  in  the  last  book  of  the  Bible,  or  could  expound  all  doctrine 
like  St.  Paul  in  his  Epistles,  or  could  move  out  and  back  into  the 
mysteries  of  the  Godhead  in  those  authoritative  and  almost  awful 
sentences  of  the  Evangelist  in  the  opening  of  his  Gospel — "In  the 
beginning  was  the  Word,  and  the  Word  was  with  God,  and  the 
Word  was  God." 

And  so,  my  friends,  in  universalizing  inspiration  as  I  have  done 
in  my  exposition  of  it  this  morning,  I  do  not  understand  that  I  have 
in  anywise  dimmed  the  glory  of  the  Bible,  as  the  supreme  Book  of 
the  world.     No,  there  it  stands  and  there  it  shines  forever. 


THE  FELLOWSHIP  OF  CHRIST'S 
SUFFERINGS. 


Delivered  at  the  General  Conference  of  Congregational  Churches 
of  Connecticut,  at  Danbury,  Conn.,  Nov.  ii,  1885. 


2  Corinthians  xi,  22-33;   x">  i-n. 

There  have  been  three  distinct  periods,  or  stages,  in  the  life  of 
our  Lord.  The  period  anterior  to  his  incarnation,  the  period 
between  his  birth  and  his  ascension,  and  the  period  from  his  ascen- 
sion to  the  present  moment ;  the  period  of  his  primal  and  divine 
glory,  the  period  of  his  humiliation  some  thirty-three  years  long,  and 
the  resurrection  or  present  period,  which  resurrection  period  is  not 
to  be  conceived  as  his  return  to  the  self-same  glory,  which  he  had 
with  the  Father  before  the  world  was.  Oh,  no  !  the  resurrection  and 
ascension  of  him  was  not  a  simple  re-instatement  in  his  ante-human 
lot ;  his  incarnation,  therefore,  being  but  a  temporary  taking  of  our 
nature  for  the  accomplishment  of  a  certain  purpose  ;  but  rather,  a 
passage  of  the  permanently  incarnated  Son  of  God  out  from  the 
humiliation  of  his  earthly  years,  into  a  final  exaltation  and  glory 
which  he  had  earned  by  his  great  and  blessed  works  for  man,  espe- 
cially by  his  adorable  and  mysterious  passion  ;  so  that  the  first  glory 
which  he  had  with  the  Father,  is  differenced  from  the  glory  which 
he  now  has  with  the  Father,  by  this  one  immense  and  pathetic' 
factor,  namely : — he  is  now  man  glorified ;  our  humanity,  in  his 
person,  is  seated  at  the  right  hand  of  the  throne  of  God.  Origi- 
nally he  was  the  Son  of  God,  that  and  no  more  ;  to-day  he  is  also 
the  Son  of  man ;  our  doomed  nature  which  he  took  he  released 
from  doom  and  carried  up  to  an  everlasting  enthronement,  going 


552  SERMONS. 

up  thither  not  solitary,  let  me  add,  but  accompanied  by  the  whole 
innumerable  host  of  his  beloved,  for  whom  before  God  he  was,  from 
first  to  last,  the  accepted  and  dear  representative. 

And  now  I  am  ready  to  raise  the  question  of  the  suffering  of 
this  great  personage  :  first,  as  the  Son  of  God,  back  there  in  that 
primitive  eternity ;  next,  as  the  Son  of  man,  "  conceived  by  the  Holy 
Ghost,  born  of  the  Virgin  Mary,"  and  lastly,  as  the  Son  of  man, 
passed  out  beyond  death,  made  glorious  in  the  glory  of  the  resur- 
rection and  raised  to  the  right  hand  of  the  eternal  throne.  It  would 
require  some  heavy  wading  and  more  time  than  I  at  present  have, 
to  discuss  the  passion  of  the  unincarnate  Son  of  God.  Perhaps  you 
think  I  could  not  establish  the  fact  of  his  passion  at  all,  in  any 
proper  use  of  the  word.  I  know  that  the  Christian  theology  has 
always  been  very  careful  not  to  humanize  God,  by  attributing  to 
him  this  and  that  feeling  too  much  like  our  own.  I  know,  too,  that 
Christian  thinkers  have  done  a  good  deal  of  thinking  and  sometimes 
a  good  deal  of  what  I  should  call  squirming,  to  explain  the  undeni- 
able passion  of  the  incarnate  Son  of  God,  the  man  Jesus,  in  a  way 
to  make  it  something  vastly  more  than  the  suffering  of  mere  man, 
and  yet  not  involve  his  divinity  therein,  so  as  to  cloud  it  and  make 
it  seem  less  than  divine.  It  has  always  seemed  safe  enough  to  me 
and  incomparably  the  most  heart-warming,  to  insist  on  the  infinite 
sensibility  of  God, — Father,  Son  and  Holy  Ghost ;  God  in  eternity, 
God  in  time,  God  unformulated,  God  formulated  in  whatever  terms 
whether  things  or  persons — God  sensitive  everywhere  and  forever. 
If  the  infinite  God  does  not  know  sympathy  and  the  sorrows  of  sym- 
pathy, where  did  this  redemption  of  man,  that  we  all  so  delight  in 
and  magnify,  get  its  start?  Jesus  himself  dropped  a  plummet  down 
to  the  very  bottom  of  this  subject,  when  he  said  to  Nicodemus,  "  God 
so  loved  the  world  that  he  gave  his  only  begotten  Son."  The  salva- 
tion originated  in  his  much-moved  feeling  then,  and  nowhere  else  ; 
and  this  idea  that  the  redemption  tracks  back  to  the  spontane- 
ous heart  of  God,  sweetly  agitated  over  our  case,  is  one  of  the  most 
constant  refrains  of  Holy  Writ  and  the  most  melodious  of  all. 

Therefore,  as  regards  the  first  period  in  the  life  of  our  Lord  and 
the  second  and  the  third — and  the  first  as  much  as  the  second  or 
third — I  desire  to  carry  the  impression  of  sensibility  from  beginning 
to  end,  sensibility  in  every  direction ;  sensibility  towards  holiness 
and  towards  sin  (or  moral  sensibility)  ;  sensibility  towards  pain 
and  towards  pleasure  wherever  in  the  universe  it  occurs  ;  sensibility, 


SERMONS.  553 

especially,  towards  human  beings  in  their  most  miserable  and  hope- 
less condition ;  so  that  when  the  Word  became  flesh  and  dwelt 
among  us  and  was  most  evidently  distressed  for  us,  that  distress  was 
not  a  totally  sudden  and  new  thing,  but  was  an  old  thing,  even  an 
eternal,  now  at  last  emerged  in  a  form  very  comprehensible  to  man 
and  very  affecting ;  albeit  in  this  emergence  of  original  sensibility, 
certain  unwonted  human  elements  mixed  in. 

Holding  this  view  of  the  primal  life  or  first  period  of  our  Lord, 
it  is  but  consistent  that  I  should  look  upon  his  present  life  in  the 
heavens,  as  one  of  precious,  unabated  sympathy  with  us. 

"  Clothed  with  our  nature  still,  he  knows 
The  weakness  of  our  frame. 

Nor  time,  nor  distance,  e'er  shall  quench 
The  fervor  of  his  love." 

And  this  love  that  he  has,  mark  you,  is  a  love  of  sympathy ;  in 
other  words,  it  is  love  for  the  woe-begone  and  suffering,  so  that  it  is 
essentially  a  suffering  love,  or  love  suffering.  To  be  sure,  at  his 
resurrection  and  ascension  he  went  into  a  transfigured  and  glorified 
condition  and  was  no  longer  the  "man  of  sorrows,"  in  precisely  the 
sense  in  which  he  had  been — all  that  was  ended  when  he  had  seen 
death  ;  but  this  progress  of  his  into  a  triumphant  and  glorified  stage, 
did  not  imply  his  disengagement  from  sympathetic  participation  in 
the  misery  of  our  case  ;  how  could  he  be  an  effectual  advocate  for 
us  before  God,  if  he  no  longer  felt  in  his  heart  the  burden  of  our 
burden  ?  The  travail  of  his  soul,  as  the  mediator,  was  past  when 
he  rose  from  the  dead,  but  his  soul  still  travailed,  because  it  was  a 
soul  and  not  a  thing — it  being  an  essential  trait  of  souls  that  they 
travail,  all  of  them,  the  good  and  the  bad  ;  but  good  souls  as  being 
affectionate,  and  Jesus  is  evermore  a  good  soul — no  exaltation  can 
alter  that. 

But  now  let  us  confine  ourselves  to  the  thirty-three  humiliated 
years  of  the  Lord ;  that  tumultuated  and  sorrowful  interval  between 
the  glory  which  he  had  with  the  Father  and  the  glory  which  he  won 
with  the  Father;  that  flow  of  years  to  which  St.  Paul  referred, 
when  he  declared  there  was  nothing  which  he  was  not  glad  to  lose, 
if  thereby  he  might  know  him  and  the  power  of  his  resurrection,  and 
the  fellowship  of  his  sufferings,  being  made  comformable  unto  his 
death  ;  if  by  any  means  he  might  attain  unto  the  resurrection  of 
the  dead. 

36 


554  SERMONS. 

What  were  those  sufferings  ?  In  replying,  I  cannot  quote  proof- 
texts  and  expound  particular  passages,  (you  would  not  be  patient 
with  me  if  I  undertook  it),  but  I  will  rapidly  give  the  teaching  of 
Holy  Writ  on  the  subject,  taken  as  a  whole  ;  thus  : 

The  incarnation  of  the  Son  of  God  was  a  profound  self-abne- 
gation on  his  part ;  and  it  would  have  been  so  even  if,  in  being 
made  man,  he  had  been  made  man  ideal,  man  as  God  originally 
conceived  and  intended  him,  or  man  as  he  will  be  when  he  comes 
to  his  perfect  redemption  ;  but,  behold  !  it  was  not  ideal  manhood 
that  the  eternal  Word  took  and  became,  but  man  fallen,  fallen  in 
both  body  and  soul.  That  broken  and  disabled  thing  he  took, 
determined  that  in  his  person,  one  man  for  all  men,  it  should  be 
raised  to  man  ideal  and  perfect.  More  specifically,  he  took  our 
intellectual  limitations,  beginning,  an  unknowing  babe  ;  as  unknow- 
ing as  the  rest  of  us,  and  growing  from  knowledge  to  knowledge. 

He  took  our  body,  sin-struck,  suffering,  mortal,  doomed  ;  and 
man-like  he  died.  He  took  our  external  condition,  the  rough 
elements  of  nature,  the  roughness  of  men  and  mobs ;  in  short,  our 
whole  sore  and  sad  environment  he  took.  He  took  our  nature  as 
liable  to  temptation,  and  was  tempted  in  all  points  like  as  we  are  ; 
and  he  gained  his  moral  expansion  and  final  magnitude  by  that 
particular  kind  of  struggle. 

These  were  a  part  of  the  infelicities  he  incurred,  a  part  of 
what  are  called  his  sufferings.  Different  forms  of  self-denial  they 
were  ;  and  how  pungent  and  afflictive  they  were,  we  can  understand 
only  by  remembering  who  it  was  that  immersed  himself  in  all  this, 
and  from  what  a  transcendent  pre-existence  he  came  down. 

But  I  have  not  as  yet  gone  to  the  depths  of  this  matter ;  there- 
fore let  us  take  two  steps  more  and  speak ;  first, 

Of  the  manner  in  which  he  took  us,  a  precious  burden  upon  his 
innermost  feeling.  He  entered  himself  into  our  lot  and  bore  it  and 
was  in  that  sense  our  substitute,  as  no  one  else  ever  was  or  could 
be.     Why? 

Because,  as  being  very  knowing,  beyond  the  children  of  men, 
he  perceived  what  we  each  one,  personally,  amount  to ;  how  sizable 
we  are  originally  and  by  creation ;  how  immeasurable  we  are  in  our 
possibilities  if  rightly  handled  and  made  the  most  of;  how  one 
human  babe  adds  up  larger  than  all  the  added  and  multiplied  worlds 
of  space,  and  bears  in  on  the  tender  feeling  of  God  three  times  as 
irresistibly,  the  fact  being  that  in  the  whole  material  creation  there  is 


SERMONS.  555 

not  one  touch  of  pathos,  while  in  the  babe  there  are  floods  of  it ; 
also  how  this  human  creature,  thus  large  and  thus  stored  with  poten- 
tialities, had  missed  his  destiny,  lost  his  God, 'condemned  himself  to 
an  eternal  development  along  lines  of  evil  and  lines  of  sorrow — all 
this,  I  say,  he  noticed,  comprehended  and  felt ;  and  he  felt  it,  not  as 
respects  the  few  persons  on  whom  his  eye  happened  to  rest,  but  as 
respects  all  persons  of  the  living  and  of  the  dead  and  of  the  unborn  ; 
the  whole  stupendous,  human  disaster  in  its  several  awful  measure- 
ments he  grasped,  and  grasping  bore  and  carried,  and  went  down 
under  in  particular  moments  of  agony.  A  tender  and  beautiful 
essay  has  been  written  by  a  modern  man  on  "a  great  multitude  a 
sad  sight ;"  but  how  great  our  human  multitude  is  in  its  total,  only 
Jesus  could  know,  how  great  each  soul  is  constitutionally  only  Jesus 
could  know,  and  what  it  is  for  a  man  to  be  lost,  only  he  of  all  woman 
born  could  tell.  A  great  multitude  a  sad  sight !  Sure  enough  !  A 
great  multitude  of  fallen  leaves  is  not  so  very  sad  a  sight,  or  fallen 
insects,  or  fallen  particles  of  dust.  The  sadness  lies  in  the  size  and 
grandeur  of  the  thing  that  is  fallen ;  and  a  fallen  world  of  men, 
ordained  to  live  forever,  was  such  a  weight  of  sadness  as  we  cannot 
conceive,  on  the  sympathetic  nature  of  the  incarnate  Son  of  God. 

But  now,  secondly,  I  strike  the  deepest  of  all  the  deeps  of  this 
deep  and  holy  subject,  the  sufferings  of  the  Lord,  when  I  suggest 
that  there  are  numerous  passages  in  the  Old  Testament  and  the  New, 
which  speak  of  his  passion,  which  cannot  be  explained  and  made  to 
sound  their  full  tone,  by  the  idea  just  unfolded  by  me,  that  Jesus 
stood  in  our  place  sympathetically  and  in  that  way  bore  our  sins. 
Many  rude  and  unpardonable  expressions  have  been  made,  first  and 
last,  in  theological  discussions  and  in  sermons  about  Jesus  bearing 
the  wrath  of  God  and  God's  penalties  in  our  stead  and  behalf;  and 
a  good  deal  of  venturesome  dogmatizing  and  analysis  has  been  done 
at  that  point  in  the  Lord's  work,  and  this  age  vigorously  recoils 
from  all  that  rudeness,  not  to  say  coarseness  of  expression  ;  neverthe- 
less, the  substitutional  idea,  as  displayed  and  much  emphasized  and 
turned  over  and  about  in  the  Scriptures,  is  not  exhausted  by  simply 
saying — Jesus  was  infinitely  sympathetic.  He  was  that,  but  he  was 
more.  There  was  a  mysterious  transaction  between  him  and  God 
as  respects  us  and  our  sin.  A  transaction,  wherein  he  and  God 
mingled  with  each  other  as  though  in  a  mutual  wrestling ;  a  transac- 
tion to  which  all  Christian  hearts  gravitate  in  a  peculiar  way  ;  the 
more  it  is  inscrutable,  the  more  fascinating  it  is  ;  half  of  the  hymns 


556  SERMONS. 

we  sing  gather  to  it ;  around  it  have  the  great  Christian  artists 
flocked  for  their  deepest  and  most  exquisite  inspirations  ;  and  often 
when  they  have  dealt  with  themes  remote  from  the  Passion,  they 
have  glorified  those  themes  by  lights  from  the  Passion,  so  that  if 
Raphael  paints  the  Transfiguration,  the  face  of  the  transfigured  one 
is  serious,  as  befits  a  man  who  has  just  conversed  with  Moses  and 
Elias  concerning  the  things  he  was  soon  to  suffer ;  and  if  he  paints 
the  Holy  Child,  or  the  blessed  mother,  still  the  faces  are  likely  to  be 
half-pensive,  as  though  touched  and  made  pensive  by  something 
akin  to  profound  premonitions.  At  the  garden  and  the  cross  also, 
does  theology  most  linger  and  strive,  as  though  the  more  she  cannot 
explore  the  mystery  of  the  mediation,  the  more  unweariedly  must 
she  try  to  ;  and  all  this  convergence  of  human  interest  to  this  par- 
ticular spot  and  crisis  in  the  life  of  the  Lord,  is  the  intuitive  testi- 
mony of  redeemed  hearts  to  the  fact  of  a  great  and  wonderful  some- 
thing in  there,  on  which  their  salvation  pre-eminently  turns.  I  prefer 
to  leave  that  something  unformulated.  I  draw  no  lines  through  that 
vagueness  and  vastness.  I  am  most  impressed  when  I  stand  on  the 
borders  of  that  cloud-land  and  listen  to  reverberations  from  far 
within,  which  I  cannot  explain.  Forth  from  the  mystery  come  a 
few  plain-spoken  outcries  from  him  who  is  enshrouded  and  hidden 
in  that  gloom — "My  God,  my  God,  why  hast  thou  forsaken  me," 
and  the  like  ;  but  even  those  cries  I  will  not  search  too  narrowly — 
enough  is  it  for  me  that  he  bore  my  sins  in  ways  known  and  ways 
unknown  ;  the  simplest  doings  of  God  are  unsearchable,  and  why 
should  not  this  pivotal  instant  in  the  drama  and  tragedy  of  redemp- 
tion be  unsearchable,  too. 

A  final  word  now  on  our  fellowship  of  his  sufferings. 

Whereinsoever  his  incarnation  and  the  events  of  his  incarnate 
career  were  a  suffering  to  him  by  virtue  of  the  glory  from  which  he 
had  come  down  and  which  he  had  lost,  and  by  virtue  of  his  divine 
nature  imprisoned  in  the  finite  and  chafed  by  human  circumstances, 
of  course  he  stands  forever  alone  and  no  fellowship  with  him  is 
possible.  The  one  and  only  respect  in  which  we  can  be  like  him 
there  is  this  :  as  he  sacrificed  himself  for  others  we  can  sacrifice  our- 
selves for  others,  we  in  our  way  as  he  did  in  his ;  but  it  is  that  dis- 
tinct and  blessed  thing,  self-sacrifice,  in  both  cases. 

Again,  as  respects  those  transcendent  and  mysterious  experi- 
ences of  his  in  the  garden  and  on  the  cross,  to  which  I  have  just 
adverted,  he  stands  forever  alone.     He  is  the  one  and  only  Mediator 


SERMONS.  557 

between  God  and  man.  We  can  be  intercessors  but  not  mediators. 
If  there  be  any  penalties  to  be  paid  for  anybody,  to  God  or  God's 
justice,  we  cannot  pay  them.  If  God  is  willing  to  deal  with  the 
human  race  in  the  person  of  some  substitute — in  any  sense — we 
certainly  cannot  be  that  substitute.  We  are  not  sufficient  there- 
unto in  either  size  or  character.  We  all  need  a  mediator  ourselves. 
The  fellowship  of  his  cross-pangs,  no  one  can  experience. 

What  then  is  left  for  us  ?  Is  there  any  fellowship  of  his  suffer- 
ings which  it  is  feasible  for  us  to  enter  ? 

On  that  I  ask,  what  does  St.  Paul  mean  when  he  says  to  his 
brethren  of  Galatia — "I  am  crucified  with  Christ."  He  means, 
I  have  gone  through  that  radical,  soul-piercing  and  really  terrible 
process,  dying  unto  sin  and  being  dead  to  the  world,  even  as 
Jesus,  though  tempted,  was  gloriously  dead  to  that  whole  thing. 
Crucifixion  is  painful ;  scarcely  is  it  possible  that  any  physi- 
cal suffering  should  be  more  intolerable  than  that ;  but  here  is  a 
slaying  and  self-destruction  far  more  acute;  "a  sword  that  pierces 
to  the  dividing  asunder  of  soul  and  spirit,  and  of  the  joints  and 
marrow,"  the  sword  of  self-denial  in  a  selfish  nature.  When  Christ 
was  crucified,  it  carried  with  it,  involved,  made  sure  and  brought  on, 
this  mental  and  spiritual  crucifixion  in  me,  Paul ;  and  when  I,  Paul, 
was  thus  crucified  and  dead,  that  death  of  mine  was  Paul  made 
dead,  in,  by  and  with,  the  death  of  Christ — his  hurt  and  suffering 
became  my  hurt  and  suffering,  my  precious  hurt  and  suffering ;  in 
that  way  I  was  "dead  with  Christ,"  "I  glory  in  the  cross  of  the 
Lord  Jesus  Christ,  whereby  the  world  is  crucified  unto  me  and  I 
unto  the  world."  And,  my  brethren,  right  there  we  all  have  a  feasi- 
ble and  bounden  fellowship  with  our  suffering  Lord.  The  thought 
is  a  little  mystical  and  elusive,  hard  to  get  at  and  hard  to  hold 
steadily — the  thought,  I  mean,  of  crucifixion  with  Christ,  by  the 
death-stroke  of  inward  self-denial.  The  thought  of  dying  to  sin  and 
being  dead  to  the  world  is  plain  enough,  but  the  exact  point  of  con- 
nection between  that  form  and  item  of  man's  suffering  and  the  suf- 
fering of  the  crucified  Jesus,  is  not  so  plain  ;  but  no  matter,  it  is  our 
dear  privilege  to  be  crucified,  every  one  of  us,  by  faith  in  the  cruci- 
fied ;  and  in  so  far  as  that  deepest  and  most  revolutionary  of  all 
experiences  has  been  really  accomplished  in  us,  we  shall  be  apt  to 
discern  the  great  import  of  that  utterance,  "  I  am  crucified  with 
Christ,"  and  of  the  several  equivalent  expressions  scattered  up  and 
down  the  pages  of  the  New  Testament. 


558  SERMONS. 

That  is  the  first  form,  then,  of  our  possible  suffering  with  our 
suffering  Lord,  and  all  other  suffering  with  him  proceeds  from  the 
common  root  of  that  great  experience. 

Again,  what  does  St.  Paul  mean  when  he  speaks  to  the  Philip- 
pian  church  of  knowing  him  in  the  fellowship  of  his  sufferings  and 
being  made  conformable  unto  his  death  ?  The  context  explains  it. 
He  refers  to  that  loss  of  all  things  for  Jesus'  sake,  which  he  had 
experienced,  even  as  Jesus  himself  had  suffered  the  loss  of  all  things, 
honor,  ease,  this  world's  goods  of  every  sort,  in  order  to  the  dis- 
charge of  his  mission.  None  of  us  will  fail  to  remember  those  vivid 
and  energetic  statements  which  St.  Paul  made,  in  regard  of  the  trials 
and  storms  of  his  lot  since  God  turned  him  into  the  way  of  Jesus 
and  the  cross.  "  I  die  daily,"  said  he,  summing  the  whole  matter 
up  ;  and  his  favorite  way  of  looking  at  this  daily  death  of  his,  was 
as  a  fellowship  with  his  dying  Lord,  whose  death  on  Mount  Calvary 
was  but  one  feature  of  a  life-long  and  daily  dying  which  he  had 
endured  in  his  renunciation  of  all  worldlies  and  his  acceptance  of 
the  hate  and  persecution  of  men.  Of  course,  a  man  whose  spiritual 
career  had  started  in  an  inward  dying  to  the  world,  as  Paul's  had, 
was  likely  to  go  on  to  all  kinds  of  external  renunciation  and  daily 
deaths  of  human  buffetings.  Inclusively,  he  had  consented  to  that 
and  pledged  himself  to  that,  when  his  soul  became  a  soul  crucified 
to  sin  and  the  world.  And  I  may  say  of  this  all-including  self-cru- 
cifixion as  I  pass  on,  that,  like  the  passion  of  Jesus,  the  sharper  and 
more  total  it  was  the  sweeter  it  was,  so  that  more  than  once  in  his 
epistles  he  testifies  to  us  that  his  one  brimming  cup  of  joy  in  this 
evil  world  was  this  tragic  identification  with  his  Master. 

And,  my  brethren,  we  are  invited  to  the  same  identification  with 
him.  The  old  fires  of  martyrdom  are  quenched,  the  cross  on  which 
Christians  used  to  be  tortured  to  death  has  disappeared  from  among 
the  barbarities  of  Christendom  at  any  rate  ;  Christianity  is  even 
popular  throughout  our  communities,  in  a  certain  way  and  measure, 
and  it  would  not  be  possible  to  make  for  ourselves  such  a  formidable 
list  of  external  renunciations  and  sufferings  as  Paul  wrote  out  and 
described  as  his  daily  dying ;  nevertheless,  if  we  have  indeed  had 
accomplished  in  us  that  first  crucifixion  with  Christ  which  I  men- 
tioned, the  crucifixion  of  our  flesh  and  the  lusts  thereof,  so  that  we 
are  dead  to  the  world  and  the  world  to  us,  it  will  assuredly  come  to 
pass  that  we  be  accounted  a  peculiar  people  by  a  worldly  world,  a 
people  to  be  despised  and  spoken  against  and  ridiculed  ofttimes ; 


SERMONS.  559 

and  moving  in  this  alien  atmosphere  and  continually  touched  by  its 
silent  sub-acid  elements,  which  we  feel  the  more  keenly  the  more 
we  are  spiritualized  and  refined,  we  shall  come  to  understand  that 
the  words  of  Jesus  had  a  universal  and  eternal  application,  rather 
than  one  local  and  transient,  when  he  said  to  his  much-despised  and 
oft-abused  disciples — "  If  the  world  hate  you,  ye  know  that  it  hated 
me  before  it  hated  you.  If  ye  were  of  the  world,  the  world  would 
love  its  own,  but  because  ye  are  not  of  the  world,  but  I  have  chosen 
you  out  of  the  world,  therefore,  the  world  hateth  you.  Remember 
the  word  that  I  said  unto  you,  the  servant  is  not  greater  than  his  Lord. 
If  they  have  persecuted  me,  they  will  also  persecute  you ;  if  they 
have  kept  my  saying,  (which  they  certainly  have  not) ,  they  will 
keep  yours  also."  That  is  true,  and  so  in  all  ages  very  devoted  and 
Christ-loving  men  have  not  shunned  persecution  for  Jesus'  sake,  but 
have  even  prized  it  as  a  badge  of  discipleship  ;  and  in  times  of 
violence  when  men  have  been  put  to  death  for  the  truth,  there  have 
not  been  wanting  some  who  even  longed  for  martyrdom,  that  they 
might  thus  the  more  deeply  enter  the  fellowship  of  his  sufferings, 
be  enrolled  among  the  heroes  of  faith  and  receive  a  final,  supreme 
certification  of  their  loyalty  to  the  suffering  Son  of  God. 

But  there  is  one  other  form  of  suffering  fellowship  with  him,  to 
which  I  must  not  fail  now,  at  last,  to  call  your  attention.  I  refer  to 
his  estimate  of  men  and  of  their  situation,  and  his  resulting  sympa- 
thetic travail  of  soul. 

My  brethren,  a  serious  debate  is  in  progress  in  our  communions 
(to  say  nothing  of  other  communions),  in  respect  of  the  eventuali- 
ties awaiting  wicked  men.  I  feel  the  surge  of  it  in  my  own  heart, 
and  I  have  the  tenderest  interest  in  the  good  souls  who  are  expend- 
ing themselves  on  that  problem.  May  God  lead  them  into  his  light 
at  last,  and  meanwhile,  let  them  have  all  the  time  and  room  they 
need  for  the  carrying  forward  of  their  own  minds  to  a  point  and 
pillar  of  rest.  But  to-day,  in  the  presence  of  the  sufferings  of 
Christ,  touched  and  mellowed  by  those  numerous  Scriptures  which 
dilate  upon  that  theme,  arrested  also  by  those  profound  texts  which 
insist  upon  a  reproduction  of  that  same  passion  in  our  souls,  so  that 
we  can  speak  of  our  suffering  as  Christ's  suffering,  (as  St.  Paul  did), 
— in  the  presence  I  say,  of  all  this,  and  by  all  this  made  to  know 
incidentally  what  a  man  is,  what  a  soul  is  worth  and  how  very  great 
(to  say  the  least  of  it),  the  destiny  of  any  and  every  man  must  be, 
I  have  no  heart  for  refinements  upon  the  question,  how  long  will 


560  SERMONS. 

wicked  men  survive,  how  long  will  they  remain  wicked  and  how, 
precisely,  will  they  fare  when  they  get  out  into  their  other  and  hidden 
state?  It  has  been  feared  that  insufficient  ideas  on  this  subject  will 
get  in  among  us  and  get  abroad,  and  will  cut  the  nerve  of  our  evan- 
gelical energy ;  but  that  nerve  will  never  be  cut,  so  long  as  our 
thinkers,  in  their  much  thinking  speculation  and  forelooking,  do 
habitually  contemplate  the  sufferings  of  Christ,  in  their  whole  breadth, 
multiplicity  and  awful  depth,  and  do  constantly  remember  that  how- 
ever difficult  it  may  be  to  settle  this  or  that  point  of  theology,  it  is 
not  at  all  difficult  to  see,  but  on  the  contrary  most  difficult  not  to 
see,  that  we  who  profess  and  call  ourselves  Christians  must  arm 
ourselves  with  the  same  mind  that  was  in  him  ;  the  mind  for  suffer- 
ing sympathetically  for  and  with  men.  The  sufferings  of  Christ  are 
Christ's  practical  exposition  of  the  eternal  destiny  of  men.  A  small 
being  and  a  small  destiny  could  not  have  called  forth  that  stupen- 
dous expression  from  him. 

But  how  shall  we,  men  and  poor  creatures,  reproduce  in  our- 
selves the  Redeemer's  sympathetic  travail  of  soul  over  the  individual 
man  and  the  sinful  millions  of  the  world  ?     In  fact,  can  we  ? 

Paul  did.  All  the  first  disciples  and  evangelists  did.  Wesley 
did.  Knox  did.  Thousands  of  men  and  women  now  living  do. 
Yes,  it  is  practicable.  We  should  not  be  so  much  exhorted  to  it  in 
the  Scriptures,  were  it  not. 

There  are  great  difficulties  in  the  way ;  such  as  the  unloveliness 
frequently  of  those  for  whom  we  are  to  feel  this  Christ-like  tender- 
ness ;  and  our  own  phlegmatic,  or  unemotional  temperament ;  or 
our  absorption,  perhaps,  in  materialistic  studies,  so  that  Nature 
is  greatened  before  our  eyes  and  man  is  cheapened  ;  or  our  total 
absorption  in  mere  humanitarian  endeavors  as  distinguished  from 
endeavors  evangelistic ;  endeavors  I  mean,  that  contemplate  and 
care  for  man  as  a  natural  and  this- world  creature,  needing  food, 
raiment,  shelter,  education  and  personal  protection,  rather  than  as 
a  spiritual  and  religious  and  eternal  creature. 

These  are  some  of  the  difficulties  in  the  way  of  what  is  called, 
old-fashionedly  "love  for  souls,"  but  which  I,  following  the  line  of 
my  subject,  describe  as  suffering  with  Christ. 

And  now,  in  spite  of  everything,  how  shall  we  come  to  that? 
Many  of  us  never  do,  very  much,  and  therefore  never  amount  to 
much  as  evangelical  powers  on  earth.  But  many  do  and  how  do 
they? 


SERMONS.  561 

Well,  if  I  may  be  permitted  to  go  to  the  very  foundation  of 
this  matter,  at  the  start  I  will  say,  that  this  particular  and  unique  fervor 
has  its  beginning  always  and  its  eternal  fountain  in  a  personal  expe- 
rience for  one's  self  of  Christ  by  the  Holy  Ghost,  a  personal  experi- 
ence, begun,  kept  up  and  daily  renewed,  on  and  on.  If  a  man 
cannot  say,  "  I  am  crucified  with  Christ,"  "I  am  dead  to  sin  and 
the  world,  and  day  by  day  I  die  to  it,  am  dead  and  am  buried," 
then  he  has  no  evangel  to  deliver,  no  yearning  over  sinful  men,  no 
longing  to  save  them ;  and  he  knows  nothing  of  that  mighty  love 
for  each  individual  of  our  race  which  filled  the  heart  of  the 
Redeemer.  He  cannot  say — "Woe  is  me  if  I  preach  not  the 
Gospel."  He  cannot  say — "I  am  willing  to  be  accursed  from 
Christ  for  the  salvation  of  my  brethren,  my  kinsmen,  according  to 
the  flesh."  He  cannot  say — "I  travail  as  in  birth-pangs,  that 
Christ  may  be  formed  in  you."  He  cannot  say  as  John  Knox  did 
— "O  God,  give  me  Scotland  or  I  die,"  and  as  myriads  of  less 
renowned  men  have  said  for  substance. 

But  this  fundamental  experience  having  been  secured,  and  love 
for  souls  having  been  thus  made  possible  to  us,  there  are  various 
ways  in  which  the  love  may  be  stirred  up  and  made  to  flame. 

For  example,  we  may  studiously  enlarge  our  conception  of  man, 
his  rank  among  created  things,  his  very  great  dimensions,  his 
indefinite  capacity  for  personal  expansion,  his  ability  to  suffer  and 
to  enjoy,  his  eternal  inability  to  go  out  of  existence,  the  enormous 
ransom  that  has  been  paid  down  for  him,  his  salvability  to  the  utter- 
most under  the  terms  of  that  ransom,  his  present  uncleanness  and 
his  possible  holiness,  his  present  spiritual  debility  and  inaptitude 
and  his  possible  vigor,  his  present  weariness  and  disrelish  and  fre- 
quent despair  in  all  moral  action  and  his  possible  spontaneity,  his 
present  manifold  dreadful  selfishness  towards  his  fellows  and  his 
possible  concord  and  affection  towards  them,  his  present  profound 
affiliation  with  the  kingdom  of  evil  and  his  possible  potential  affilia- 
tion with  the  kingdom  of  God.  Such  studies  and  meditations  as 
these,  made  habitual  and  carried  on  in  the  light  of  the  Holy  Script- 
ures with  much  prayer  for  light  all  the  while,  will  make  us  feel 
about  men  as  Christ  felt,  will  sweep  us  into  and  engulf  us  in,  the 
fellowship  of  his  sufferings,  will  make  Gethsemane  and  Calvary  with 
their  mystical  passion  seem  credible  and  precious,  will  make  the 
Incarnation  with  all  that  it  implies,  contains,  enfolds  and  enshrines, 
seem  credible  ;  will  illuminate  all  doctrine,  in  fact,  will  give  us  a  hold 


562  SERMONS. 

on  all  doctrine  as  an  instrument  for  human  salvation,  rather  than  as 
an  instrument  for  speculation,  combat  and  sharpening  of  wits,  (for 
always  when  doctrine  is  contemplated,  explored  and  used  thus  in- 
strumentally,  it  is  likely  to  be  held  truthfully  and  in  the  right  pro- 
portions of  truth,  and  heterodoxy  is  forestalled — that  I  throw  in  by 
the  way) . 

Also  these  contemplations  of  man  in  his  several  aspects,  and 
the  concern  for  him  as  a  spiritual  being  which  is  thus  made  to 
spring  up  in  us,  will  cause  our  sermons,  if  we  are  preachers  as  many 
here  present  are,  to  be  fashioned  and  intended  as  instruments  of 
salvation  rather  than  as  specimens  of  rhetoric,  logic,  decoration  and 
sensation  ;  also  a  large  estimate  of  man  as  worth  saving  and  possible 
to  be  saved,  will  obliterate  for  us  all  differences  between  one  man 
and  another,  as  high  and  low,  great  and  small,  brainy  and  feeble, 
amiable  and  wicked.  For  where  all  are  infinite  practically  and 
potentially,  as  all  men  are,  both  naturally  and  by  the  grace  of  God, 
of  what  account  are  distinctions  ?  When  the  midnight  angel  put  the 
blood  mark  on  the  Jewish  houses  in  Egypt,  he  did  not  stop  to  ask — 
"  what  particular  Jew  lives  here  and  here  and  here,  and  what  kind 
of  a  man  may  he  be?"  and  when  the  blood  of  the  Lamb  slain  from 
the  foundation  of  the  world,  was  to  be  sprinkled  on  the  children  of 
men,  similarly  it  was  sprinkled  upon  all ;  all  received  that  token  of 
their  own  consequence  or  worth,  as  subjects  for  salvation  and  of  the 
corresponding  tender  interest  of  their  God — and  we  should  all  follow 
the  lead  of  that  token  and  consider  man  simply  as  man,  as  all  those 
are  likely  to  who  discern  the  infinite  in  every  human  creature,  how- 
ever little.  And  what  other  wholesome  effects  will  follow  that  study 
and  Scriptural  estimate  of  man  whereof  I  speak,  I  cannot  now  say 
and  do  not  need  to,  I  hope,  after  so  much  has  been  said  and  so 
much  valuable  time  consumed.  No  man  knows  the  worth  of  a  soul 
till  he  knows  the  worth  of  his  own  soul,  and  no  man  knows  the  worth 
of  his  own  soul  until  the  Holy  Ghost  has  entered  him,  and  by  this 
and  that  supernatural  work,  there  has  developed  to  his  conscious- 
ness the  hell  of  natural  elements  in  his  nature  and  the  unlimited 
good  possibilities  of  that  nature  notwithstanding.  And  even  if  a 
man  could  know  how  immensely  worth  saving  souls  are,  without  this 
inward  experience  of  his  own,  what  courage  would  he  have  to  work 
for  their  salvation  ?  A  man  not  saved  himself  work  for  the  salvation 
of  others  with  any  zest  and  push  !  Is  that  likely  ?  How  does  he 
know  that  they  can  be  saved  ?     He  has  had  some  hearsay  on  the 


SERMONS.  563 

point,  but  he  cannot  feel  it  in  a  way  to  make  him  take  hold  and  work. 
No  one  was  ever  effectually  notified  of  the  salvability  of  men,  or  of 
any  man,  except  by  the  kingdom  of  God  being  set  up  in  his  own 
heart.  And  have  we  not  all  noticed,  my  Christian  brethren,  that 
when  we  are  ourselves  most  saved,  are  in  our  highest  states  of  grace, 
are  most  conscious  of  God's  victory  in  us,  everything  seems  possible 
in  the  way  of  conversion  and  salvation  for  others. 

I  have  said  a  good  deal  about  suffering  to-day,  but  I  hope  I 
have  not  let  any  lamentation  into  the  subject.  That  would  be  very 
unscriptural.  Was  Jesus  a  lamenting,  downcast  man?  Was  Paul, 
who  spoke  so  much  of  what  he  had  to  pass  through  ?  Is  this  Gospel 
set  in  a  minor  key?  Do  we  not  read  of  the  sacrifices  of  joy,  imply- 
ing that  self-sacrifice  and  suffering  may  come  to  be  the  very  wine  of 
life?  "I  have  meat  to  eat  that  ye  know  not  of,"  said  Jesus,  "my 
meat  is  to  do  the  will  of  him  that  sent  me  and  to  finish  his  work  j" 
and  when  he  had  reached  the  point  where  he  could  say,  "  It  is  fin- 
ished," all  waves  and  billows  had  gone  over  him,  and  his  suffering 
mediatorship  was  at  its  climax — such  inconceivable  extremities  as 
that  were  the  meat  on  which  he  feasted,  and  which  others  who  were 
full  of  this  world's  bread  knew  not  of.  Into  "  the  sacrifices  of  joy"  he 
had  fully  come ;  and  he  calls  us  all  to  drink  with  him  of  that  cup 
and  eat  with  him  of  that  meat  and  partake  with  him  of  that  honey, 
milk  and  wine,  the  very  fatness  of  the  Kingdom  of  God. 


NATURE  EXPRESSIVE  OF  GOD 

AND  AN  INSTRUMENT  OF  SELF-EXPRESSION 

FOR   MAN. 


Delivered  at  the  Park  Church,  Hartford,  May  15, 


The  heavens  declare  the  glory  of  God. — Psalms  xix,  1,  2. 

My  Friends — I  myself  get  so  much  help  of  several  kinds  from 
my  frequent  converse  with  the  scenes  of  Nature,  that  I  am  con- 
tinually tempted  to  give  discourses  on  Nature  from  my  pulpit,  by 
way  of  helping  others  into  the  same  advantage  and  felicity.  Some 
do  have  the  felicity  already,  but  many  do  not ;  and  yet  nobody 
need  fail  of  it.  One  is  a  little  timid  about  bringing  a  good  deal  of 
Nature  into  the  pulpit,  because  many  have  a  feeling  that  that  is  not 
preaching  the  Gospel  quite  as  definitely  and  exclusively  as  a  man 
ought.  Some  sinner  inquiring  about  the  way  of  salvation  might  be 
present,  they  say,  and  a  sermon  on  Nature  would  not  touch  his 
case.  I  have  heard  it  said  that  no  sermon  ought  to  be  preached, 
ever,  in  which  a  sincere  inquirer  might  not  find  enough  of  Christ  to 
make  a  Christian  of  him.  That  is  a  narrow  and  indefensible  view, 
I  am  sure,  but  I  will  not  prove  it  now.  Neither  will  I  undertake 
to  tell  all  the  good  uses  of  Nature-discourses.  I  will  only  take  time 
to  assert  that  God  has  other  than  Gospel  or  Bible  words  for  the 
children  of  men,  and  all  of  God's  words  are  important  to  be  lis- 
tened to.  A  good  deal  of  harm  is  done  by  the  notion  that  God, 
speaking  to  us  through  Nature,  does  not  need  to  be  heeded.  He 
does  need  to  be  heeded.  The  Bible  is  no  more  truly  a  Bible  than 
the  creation  is,  though  it  is  a  richer  one,  because  it  contains  Jesus 


SERMONS.  565 

Christ  and  his  salvation.  Some  honest  persons  think  the  Old 
Testament  has  largely  outlived  its  usefulness,  because  a  better 
Testament  has  come ;  and  in  like  manner,  and  with  as  little  reason 
for  it,  many  think  that  Nature  is  less  important  than  it  was,  because 
the  Bible  has  been  written.  Nature,  as  a  revelation  of  God  and  an 
instrument  of  expression  for  man,  is  as  important  as  it  ever  was ; 
and  it  is  being  used  with  more  effect  in  these  modern  days  than  it 
ever  was  before — a  great  deal  more.  It  is  more  studied  by  religious 
men  and  by  all  kinds  of  men ;  science  has  compelled  it.  That  for 
one  thing.  And  this  shouting  of  some  to  the  effect  that  the  Bible 
is  getting  dishonored,  because  millions  of  us  are  inclined  to  listen 
to  God  through  whatever  organ  or  channel  he  utters  himself,  is 
both  unintelligent  and  futile.  The  world  has  waked  up  to  God  in 
Nature.  The  poets  have  waked  up  to  it,  and  all  thinkers  of  a  wide- 
ranging  intellectual  habit  have  waked  up  to  the  fact  that  Nature  is 
a  magnificent  instrument  of  self-expression  for  man,  as  much  as  it 
is  an  instrument  of  self-expression  for  God.  The  forms  and  actions 
of  Nature  are  the  vernacular  of  both  man  and  God ;  and  so  man 
and  God  meet  at  that  point  and  understand  each  other.  Robert 
Browning  has  written  a  characteristically  obscure  and  characteristic- 
ally profound  little  poem  to  bring  out  the  idea  that  Nature  is  not 
a  mere  spectacle  to  delight  the  senses,  like  so  much  tinsel,  but  is 
the  investiture  of  God  and  must  be  so  looked  at ;  and  that  in  order 
that  it  may  be  so  looked  at,  the  on-looker  must  have  love  in  his 
soul.  Love  !  which  is  the  essence  of  the  God  who  tries  to  speak  to 
his  children  through  these  his  works.  Love  !  which  is  the  essence 
also  of  the  Christ.  The  summer  is  affluent,  he  says,  the  sky  is 
blue,  flowers  are  beautiful,  the  leafage  of  the  leafy  world  is  all  you 
could  ask  for,  but  what  do  these  things  and  ten  thousand  more 
amount  to  if  you  have  not  the  heart  or  the  nature  to  see  the 
spiritual  contents  of  them,  the  divine  in  them,  the  blessed  God 
back  of  them  ?  He  calls  his  poem  "  Wanting  is — What  ?  "  or,  in  plain 
English,  "  What  is,  wanting  or  lacking  ?"  Hear  him  set  the  matter 
out. 

Wanting  is — what? 
Summer  redundant, 
Blueness  abundant — 

Where  is  the  spot? 

Beamy  the  world,  yet  a  blank  all  the  same, 

Framework  which  waits  for  a  picture  to  frame : 

What  of  the  leafage,  what  of  the  flower? 


566  SERMONS. 

Roses  embowering  with  nought  they  embower  ! 
Come  then,  complete  incompletion,  O  Comer, 

(That  is,  O  Christ-Spirit,  O  Love.) 
Pant  through  the  blueness,  perfect  the  Summer ! 
Breathe  but  one  breath 

Rose-beauty  above, 
And  all  that  was  death 

Grows  life,  grows  love, 

Grows  love ! 

Now,  that  energetic  flow  of  true  and  deep  feeling  might  not 
convert  a  soul  as  directly  as  the  preaching  of  Christ  would ;  but 
that  feeling  about  Nature  as  a  hollow  thing,  except  as  spiritually 
conceived,  and  that  thorough  conviction  that  Nature  cannot  be 
spiritually  conceived  by  any  but  a  spiritual  mind,  is  intensely 
religious  and  is  biblical  in  the  sense  of  being  harmonious  with  what 
the  Bible  teaches.  Spiritual  things  are  spiritually  discerned,  says 
St.  Paul  in  so  many  words  ;  and  that  Nature  is  essentially  spiritual, 
says  the  Bible  all  through. 

I  was  speaking  of  Nature  as  an  instrument  of  self-expression 
for  us,  and  it  were  possible  to  make  a  large  argument  thereon ;  but 
I  prefer,  for  once,  to  resort  to  the  poets  for  a  statement  of  that  and 
of  certain  things  immediately  adjacent  thereto.  So  soon  as  a 
person  fully  takes  the  two-fold  idea — first,  that  Nature  is  of  God 
and  is  full  of  God ;  and,  secondly,  that  Nature  is  the  counterpart 
of  man  as  a  spiritual  being,  his  other  self,  his  twin  brother,  he 
begins  to  snug  close  to  her,  and  enjoy  her,  and  speak  of  her  in  a 
dear  way,  and  illuminate  his  utterances  with  her  images,  and  make 
her  the  vehicle  of  his  experience.  I  have  begun  on  Browning,  and 
I  will  illustrate  this  also  from  him.  He  had  lost  a  much-loved 
friend  by  death.  That  friend  died  in  May,  and  in  his  first  tremen- 
dous feeling  about  it  he  wished  that  that  month  of  the  year  might 
be  abolished  and  no  more  Mays  come  forever  and  ever.  Let  it 
disappear  with  that  precious  buried  man.  A  natural  thought  of  deep 
hearts.  In  1867-8,  after  our  war  of  the  Rebellion  was  closed,  our 
Government  sent  a  sort  of  show  squadron  to  the  principal  ports  of 
Europe,  which  was  received,  of  course,  with  great  attention ;  and 
an  officer  on  that  fleet  told  me  that  when  they  were  entertained  at 
a  banquet  in  St.  Petersburg,  the  Russian  gentlemen,  their  hosts,  at 
the  close  of  the  banquet  proceeded  to  destroy  the  costly  dishes  and 
furniture,  vowing  that  they  should  not  be  used  by  anybody  save 
these   Americans.      And  many   of  us  know   spots   in   the   world, 


SERMONS.  567 

objects,  scenes,  lonely  walks,  single  trees,  a  rock,  a  certain  flower, 
a  certain  lake  or  stream,  or  wood,  or  height,  so  associated  with  this 
or  that  friend,  the  soul  of  our  soul,  that  it  seems  a  sort  of  profana- 
tion for  any  other  human  being  to  have  anything  to  do  with  those 
objects.  So  then  the  poet's  feeling  about  that  dreadful  month  of 
May  was  natural.  He  wanted  no  more  Mays  to  come.  But  after- 
wards, as  a  really  loving  heart  must,  he  relented.  Other  pairs  of 
friends  would  want  the  recurring  Mays,  the  May  moons,  the  long 
evenings  under  the  sky,  and  all  that,  he  said.  Therefore,  let  them 
have  them  ;  let  them  have  them.  But  there  is  one  May  plant  that 
appears  in  the  woods,  whose  green  is  streaked  with  red,  which  he 
would  like  reserved  from  all  future  pairs  of  friends  and  destroyed 
from  the  face  of  the  earth.  He  and  his  lost  one  had  had  much  to 
do  with  that  plant,  and  now,  whenever  he  saw  it,  that  red  streak 
seemed  as  though  it  were  his  own  heart's  blood,  it  so  anguished  his 
fond,  remembering  mind.  And  this  is  the  way  he  writes  about  that 
whole  matter : 

I  wish  that  when  you  died  last  May, 

Charles,  there  had  died  along  with  you 
Three  parts  of  Spring's  delightful  things; 

Aye,  and,  for  me,  the  fourth  part  too. 

A  foolish  thought,  and  worse,  perhaps  ! 

There  must  be  many  a  pair  of  friends 
Who,  arm  in  arm,  deserve  the  warm 

Moon-births  and  the  long  evening-ends. 

So,  for  their  sakes,  be  May  still  May  ! 

Let  their  new  time,  as  mine  of  old, 
Do  all  it  did  for  me  :  I  bid 

Sweet  sights  and  sounds  throng  manifold. 

Only  one,  little  sight,  one  plant, 

Woods  have  in  May,  that  starts  up  green 

Save  a  sole  streak,  which,  so  to  speak, 

Is  Spring's  blood,  spilt  its  leaves  between, — 

That,  they  might  spare;   a  certain  wood 

Might  miss  the  plant ;  their  loss  were  small : 

But  I, — when'er  the  leaf  grows  there, 
Its  drop  comes  from  my  heart,  that's  all. 

That  is  emotion  in  a  very  deep  and  intense  form,  and  it  is  not 
insane  emotion  or  eccentric  emotion ;  emotion,  I  mean,  one  side 
of  the  beaten  paths  of  human  experience.     On  the  contrary,  it  is 


568  SERMONS. 

what  all  hearts  feel,  if  they  are  profound  and  vital  enough  and  are 
accustomed  to  associate  their  heart  experiences  with  outward 
things.  But  I  have  brought  up  this  piece  of  writing  to  show  in 
what  a  near  and  dear  way  one  snugs  close  to'  Nature  so  soon  as  he 
learns  to  conceive  her  spiritually,  as  expressive  of  both  God  and 
man.  The  May  in  that  poem,  the  May  moons,  the  evenings  long 
and  late,  the  one  blood-streaked  little  plant  in  the  May  woods,  are 
deftly  commingled  with  the  sweet  and  pensive  agitations  of  the 
bereaved  human  heart,  and  made  an  instrument  of  utterance  for 
that  heart.  A  perfectly  legitimate  proceeding  in  the  principle  of  it. 
A  sort  of  proceeding  for  which  Nature  was  created.  A  proceeding 
which  marks  a  poetic  mind,  to  be  sure,  but  then  we  are  all  potential 
poets.  It  is  no  more  feasible  for  Browning  to  convert  the  May  to 
his  private  use,  in  that  fashion,  than  it  is  for  you  and  me  ;  neither 
does  the  May,  with  its  moons  and  all  the  rest,  belong  to  him  more 
than  to  us.  It  belongs  to  all  of  us,  because  the  kind  God  of  all  of 
us  made  it  and  set  it  in  tune  to  our  needs.  None  of  us  can  versify 
what  we  think  and  feel,  as  Browning  can ;  but  we  can,  every  one, 
have  in  us  the  stock  for  versification,  and  in  some  remote  life  we 
shall  use  it,  perhaps,  and  be  poets.  For  my  part,  I  am  not  afraid 
to  say  that  in  this  his  genial,  vivid  and  subtle  hold  on,  and  fellow- 
ship with,  natural  things,  and  in  his  turning  of  them  thus  to  his 
personal  uses,  I  myself  am  a  true  kinsman  of  his.  So  are  many  of 
us.  And  it  amounts  to  an  immense  expansion  of  our  intellectual 
and  emotional  life,  to  be  thus  congenially  intermingled  with  the 
creation  of  God.  It  is  a  great  self-expansion  to  be  affectionally 
intermingled  with  our  human  kind.  The  mother  is  personally 
quadrupled  in  and  by  her  sympathetic  involvement  in  the  life  and 
fortunes  of  her  children.  The  fond  husband  lives  in  his  wife,  as 
she  also  does  in  him  ;  so  that  when  a  man  and  woman  marry,  it  is 
not  simply  the  adding  together  of  two  lives  hitherto  separated. 
Nay,  it  is  the  very  great  enlargement  of  each  life,  so  that  they  add 
up,  not  one  man  and  one  woman — one  and  one  are  two — but  one 
man  vastly  enlarged  and  one  woman  vastly  enlarged — one  and  one 
are  ten  !  So,  through  the  whole  realm  of  personal  relations.  An 
isolated  life  is  an  unsizable  thing,  so  well  as  pretty  empty  of  joy. 
A  life  associated  and  sympathetic  is  a  delightful  self-expansion  ;  and 
if  we  are  sympathetically  one  with  all  mankind,  as  Jesus  was,  we 
are  practically  infinite  persons  and  often  feel  that  we  are.  All  of 
which  I  say,  as  prefatory  to  this  other  equally  true  saying :  that  he 


SERMONS.  569 

who  is  sympathetically  intermingled  with  Nature  doth  secure  for 
himself  still  another  expansion ;  he  is  sizable  by  her  size ;  he  is 
manifold  by  her  manifoldness  ;  he  is  various  by  her  variety ;  he  is 
alive  by  her  life ;  he  is  inwardly  beautified  by  her  beauty ;  he 
is  affluent  by  her  affluence ;  he  is  in  the  beat  of  her  harmonies ; 
he  is  inspired  by  her  God  ;  living  he  twice  lives,  and  dying  he  dies 
in  the  repose  of  her  bosom,  even  as  Matthew  Arnold,  in  a  certain 
poem  of  his,  says  he  wants  to.  I  wish  I  had  time  to  quote  the 
whole  of  it.  When  he  dies,  he  says,  do  not  bring  to  me  my  heirs, 
the  doctor,  the  minister,  the  close  room,  the  gloom,  and  all  that. 

Bring  none  of  these;  but  let  me  be, 

While  all  around  in  silence  lies, 
Moved  to  the  window  near,  and  see 

Once  more,  before  my  dying  eyes, 

Bathed  in  the  sacred  dews  of  morn 

The  wide  aerial  landscape  spread — 
The  world  which  was  ere  I  was  born, 

The  world  which  lasts  when  I  am  dead; 

Which  never  was  the  friend  of  one, 

Nor  promised  love  it  could  not  give, 
But  lit  for  all  its  generous  sun, 

And  lived  itself,  and  made  us  live. 

There  let  me  gaze,  till  I  become 

In  soul,  with  what  I  gaze  on,  wed ! 
To  feel  the  universe  my  home; 

To  have  before  my  mind — instead 

Of  the  sick  room,  the  mortal  strife, 

The  turmoil  for  a  little  breath — 
The  pure  eternal  course  of  life, 

Not  human  combatings  with  death. 

Thus  feeling,  gazing,  might  I  grow 

Composed,  refreshed,  ennobled,  clear; 
Then  willing  let  my  spirit  go 

To  work  or  wait  elsewhere  or  here  ! 

Our  best  literature,  both  prose  and  poetry,  is  full  of  this  iden- 
tification with  Nature  and  self-immersement  in  her,  in  such  wise  as 
to  share  her  peace,  her  largeness,  her  seriousness  and  beauty,  and 
all  that  goes  to  make  up  her  infinite  and  ever-changeful  and  flowing 
life.  Tennyson  furnishes  us  hundreds  of  instances  of  it.  Words- 
worth and  Nature  are  twin  souls,  and  I  could  quote  to  you  from 
37 


570  SERMONS. 

him  for  hours,  in  illustration.  Cowper  is  another  who  is  rich  in  the 
same  way  of  feeling.  And  there  be  many  more.  It  is  one  of  the 
glories  of  modern  times  that  our  writers  are  in  this  secret  of  identi- 
fication with  Nature.  It  shows  depth,  it  shows  spiritual  elevation, 
it  promotes  mental  fertility  in  the  writers  themselves ;  and  in  so  far 
as  we  read  them  appreciatively,  we  are  let  in  to  all  which  they 
experience,  as  thus  conversant  with  natural  things.  Poetry  depends 
for  its  material  on  human  life  and  on  Nature.  In  so  far  as  it  con- 
fines itself  to  human  life,  it  tends  to  become  over-intense,  morbid, 
mournful,  complaining  and  unwholesome ;  much  as  Matthew 
Arnold  was'  afraid  he  should  be  and  feel,  if  he  should  die  in  the 
smother  and  gloom  of  a  close  room,  with  the  doctor  and  others 
crowding  about.  But  when  poetry  moves  forth  into  the  creation 
for  her  stock  and  stuff,  she  broadens  into  the  sanity  of  the  creation, 
and  her  songs  of  human  life  begin  then  to  have  health  in  them  and 
an  all-out-doors  largeness  !  True,  the  creation  itself  is  a  sin-cursed 
thing,  according  to  Holy  Writ,  as  truly  as  are  the  human  soul  and 
human  life ;  nevertheless,  her  accursedness  seems  more  mingled 
with  ameliorations  than  man's  does.  She  is  more  reposeful  than 
man,  or  has  more  moments  of  repose.  And  she  sheds  repose,  when 
looked  at  and  communed  with,  more  than  man  sheds  it.  In  a 
household  where  all  is  love,  there  is  much  peace  ;  love  anywhere 
makes  peace,  but  love  is  not  always  the  only  thing  even  in  the 
dearest  household,  nor  even  in  the  communion  of  one  and  one. 
In  fact,  love  itself  brings  in  anxiety  and  agitation ;  the  more  love 
the  more  agitation ;  and  every  now  and  then,  despite  all  the  love, 
everything  seems  going  stern  first.  That  is,  life  at  its  best ;  and 
then  if  you  take  life  at  large — life  in  bad  households,  life  in  great 
cities,  life  in  barbarian  communities,  life  in  famine,  pestilence  and 
war,  life  in  its  thousand  diabolical  forms  of  selfishness  and  trans- 
gression— why  !  it  is  enough  to  break  one's  heart  to  contemplate  it, 
so  that  most  people  refuse  to  contemplate  it.  But  there  is  nothing 
heart-breaking  in  the  blue  sky,  and  that  same  sky  when  set  with 
stars  does  not  breathe  restlessness  into  the  mind,  nor  any  such 
thing.  Go  up  to  some  height  and  look  over  one  of  our  pastoral 
landscapes,  and  what  quietness  there  is  in  it  always  for  your  mind, 
tired  and  vexed  by  the  toil  and  friction  and  sorrow  of  life.  What 
quietness  !  How  softened  all  the  sounds  come  to  your  ear ;  the 
lowing  of  cattle,  the  rumble  of  wagons,  the  shouts  of  laborers,  the 
barking  of  dogs,  the  thunder  of  rail-trains,  the  bells  in  the  steeples 


SERMONS.  571 

telling  off  the  hours.  How  soothing  to  the  eye  the  outspread  green 
of  the  fields  and  forests.  In  what  a  tranquil  and  sweet  way  the 
thought  of  copious  plenty  for  man  and  beast  is  carried  into  your 
mind  by  the  great  and  diverse  spread  of  growing  harvests  before 
your  eyes.  How  still  and  assuring  stand  the  great  hills.  How 
music-like  is  the  noise  of  the  flow  of  the  streams  through  the  val- 
leys. How  peace-giving  the  flow  of  curves  by  which  all  things  are 
bounded  and  defined,  the  graceful  circle  of  the  horizon,  the  soft- 
ened contours  of  the  hills  and  mountains,  the  sweep  of  the  forests, 
the  wind-and-wind  of  the  brooks,  the  aerial  circuits  of  the  birds. 
And  even  the  scattered  farm  houses ;  with  what  serenity  and  bene- 
diction they  come  into  our  feeling.  No  doubt,  under  all  those 
rural  roofs,  there  is  to  be  found  the  uneasy  human  heart  and  a 
great  deal  of  jar  and  misery.  We  know  that  right  well.  We  admit 
it.  And  we  try  to  be  sorry  and  stirred  up  about  it  as  we  stand 
there  on  our  height.  But  these  spots  of  human  fret,  these  tragedies 
and  what  not,  under  the  roofs,  are  so  scattered  and  so  set  in  the 
boundless  calm  of  Nature,  that  we  are  unable  to  take  their  curse 
and  agitation  into  our  souls.  Peace  prevails  over  disquiet ;  and  we 
assimilate  to  the  serenity  of  Nature,  and  something  that  seems  like 
the  very  peace  of  God  is  granted  unto  us.  Of  course,  I  do  not 
forget  that  Nature  has  her  storm  scenes ;  her  furies  of  cold,  heat, 
earthquakes,  deluging  rains,  desolate  midnights,  droughts  and 
deserts,  untimely  frosts ;  and  portents  in  sky,  earth,  and  sea.  But 
what  shall  we  say  of  these  ?  Are  they  much  better  than  the  worst 
forms  of  human  life  to  commune  with,  and  gather  in  for  the  material 
of  poetry  and  literature  ?  Yes,  they  are.  The  agitations  of  Nature 
— all  its  ordinary  agitations  at  all  events — its  customary  storms  as 
the  year  rolls  around,  its  wild-flying  snow  showers,  its  roaring,  windy 
rains,  its  roll  of  seas  against  rocky  shores,  while  they  unquestion- 
ably arouse  the  mind  and,  in  that  sense,  destroy  our  peace  for  the 
time,  do  not  make  us  to  be  unhappy  and  to  wish  not  to  live  any 
longer,  as  human  life  looked  at  by  us  frequently  does.  No,  we 
are  more  full  than  ever  of  the  joy  of  living,  when  we  are  in  the 
midst  of  these  tumultuations  of  the  visible  world.  They  do  not 
depress  us.  They  do  not  cause  us  to  doubt  the  administration  of 
Almighty  God.  They  do  not  start  in  us  a  disrelish  of  our  human 
kind,  as  too  much  familiarity  with  human  life  at  large  easily  may. 
They  do  not  start  in  us  that  direst  of  all  things,  remorse.  I  do  not 
know  that  they  even  suggest  disorder  necessarily,  and  make  us 


572  SERMONS. 

wretched  in  that  way.  A  great  storm,  a  frightened  scurry  of  dark 
clouds  across  the  sky,  a  mutter  of  thunder,  a  frisk  of  electric  zig- 
zags in  the  night,  a  downfall  of  avalanches,  a  sweep  of  floods  ;  these 
seem  just  a  normal  part  of  the  bigness  of  Nature,  and  what  might 
have  been  expected  from  such  immenseness  as  hers  and  such 
almost  almighty  forces.  The  human  mind  actually  needs  these 
titanic  movements,  these  awe-inspiring  exhibitions  of  force,  as  a 
match  to  certain  moods  of  her  own,  and  a  suitable  language  for 
those  moods.  At  any  rate,  none  of  these  more  striking  on-goings  of 
Nature  are  in  any  way  unwholesome  for  men  to  look  at,  dwell  upon, 
and  mentally  mix  in  with.  Neither  do  they  ever  make  us  unhappy, 
except  as  they  destroy  life,  and  thus  become  a  part  of  that  confess- 
edly depressing  thing,  human  life. 

I  have  spoken  to  you  a  good  deal  this  morning  of  tranquillity, 
and  of  Nature  as  able  to  minister  it  to  us ;  and  it  may  occur  to  you 
that  I  have  pushed  that  particular  form  of  blessing  into  the  fore- 
ground rather  excessively,  as  though  simple  peace  within  ourselves 
were  the  all  of  life.     On  that  I  would  like  to  say  some  things. 

When  I  speak  of  repose  of  mind  in  this  admiring  way,  and 
praise  Nature  as  a  great  giver  of  it,  I  am  not  thinking  of  lassitude, 
supineness,  inertia,  like  the  stillness  of  inanimate  things.  I  am 
thinking  of  a  very  affirmative  and  full-girded  state  of  mind,  every 
faculty  alert,  every  sensibility  alive.  I  should  not  say  that  Nature 
is  fitted  to  breathe  repose,  in  the  sense  of  supineness  or  lethargy, 
into  man.  We  speak  of  her  "inanimate"  forms,  and  one  might 
infer  that  those  forms  are  likely  to  communicate  inanimation  to 
human  beholders ;  but,  to  say  the  truth,  I  do  not  consider  any 
natural  thing  inanimate.  A  mountain  is  as  inanimate  as  any,  I 
suppose,  but  the  mountain  looks  to  me  like  the  very  image  of 
infinite  live  strength,  in  infinite  repose.  And  when  I  chant  in  the 
psalm  "The  strength  of  the  hills  is  his  also,"  I  should  almost  as 
soon  impute  inanimation  to  the  power  of  God,  as  to  call  the  strength 
of  the  hills  an  inanimate  strength.  But,  some  one  may  say  : — "  In 
real  strictness  of  speech,  are  not  the  hills  inanimate?  after  all,  are 
they  not?  and  is  it  not  a  poetic  flight,  not  to  say  flightiness,  to 
speak  of  them  otherwise?"    To  which  I  make  answer  : 

First,  That,  by  virtue  of  the  all  sorts  of  active  processes  eter- 
nally going  on  in  the  mountains  throughout  their  interiors,  as  well 
as  by  virtue  of  the  numberless  live  processes  that  go  on  upon  their 
surfaces,  the  great  and  little  growths,  tree,  flower,  plant,  and  vine, 


SERMONS.  573 

one  is  not  quite  true  to  his  own  feeling  about  the  mountains  if  he 
does  not  call  them  live  creatures. 

Secondly,  It  is  one  of  the  prerogatives  of  the  mind  of  man  to 
turn  inanimate  things  to  animate  uses,  as  where  Browning  made  a 
certain  leaf  of  a  certain  plant  that  was  streaked  with  red  stand  for 
his  own  unutterable  sorrow ;  and  where  an  inanimate  thing  is  thus 
used,  it  is  quite  inevitable  to  a  right  feeling  mind  to  ascribe  anima- 
tion to  that  inanimate  itself;  it  is  not  merely  poetry  to  do  this,  but 
common  decency ;  a  mind  that  will  not  do  it  is  too  wooden  to  be 
interesting. 

So  much  on  Nature  as  fitted  to  invigorate  rather  than  lethar- 
gize  the  mind.  It  is  her  function  to  invigorate.  The  repose  she 
gives  us  who  come  close  to  her  is  a  live  repose  ;  a  state  of  mind 
wide-awake  and  most  affirmative. 

And  I  insist  that  that  particular  kind  of  repose — a  girded  and 
encouraged  state  of  mind,  a  mind  at  rest  because  not  unhappy — is 
what  is  needed  by  us  for  the  best  action  of  our  minds  and  hearts  in 
every  direction  of  action.  Particularly  is  this  kind  of  inner  tran- 
quillity favorable  to  piety.  It  is  favorable  to  kindliness,  to  prayer- 
fulness,  to  meditation,  to  patience.  If  I  am  not  at  fret  within 
myself,  I  do  not  fret  at  other  people.  If  I  am  not  perturbated 
within  my  soul,  my  soul  mirrors  God  and  all  heavenly  and  spiritual 
things,  as  the  still  lake  mirrors  every  over-passing  cloud.  I  must 
be  tranquilized  then,  and  kept  tranquil.  That  is  the  first  and 
greatest  thing.  And  Nature  must  be  permitted  to  do  it  for  me  in 
her  way  and  measure,  as  she  stands  ready  to. 

I  wish  to  say  distinctly  as  I  close,  however,  what  I  have  said 
before,  for  substance  :  that  Nature  has  the  means  whereby  to 
express  and  communicate  to  us  many  ideas  and  feelings  that  would 
not  come  naturally  and  altogether  under  the  head  of  repose,  per- 
haps. When  Matthew  Arnold  stood  on  the  shore  of  the  sea  at  the 
Straits  of  Dover,  in  the  night,  with  the  moon  overhead,  and 
wrote : 

Listen  !  you  hear  the  grating  roar 

Of  pebbles  which  the  waves  draw  back,  and  fling, 

At  their  return,  up  the  high  strand, 

Begin,  and  cease,  and  then  again  begin, 

With  tremulous  cadence  slow,  and  bring 

The  eternal  note  of  sadness  in. 

Sophocles  long  ago 

Heard  it  on  the  /Egean,  and  it  brought 


574  SERMONS. 

Into  his  mind  the  turbid  ebb  and  flow 
Of  human  misery ;  we 
Find  also  in  the  sound  a  thought, 
Hearing  it  by  this  distant  northern  sea, — 

he  was  sufficiently  composed,  by  that  which  he  saw  and  heard  there, 
we  may  say ;  he  was  not  untranquil,  but  solidly  settled  in  his  mind 
rather ;  and  yet  there  was  more  than  tranquillity  in  his  mind  ;  the 
scene  was  more  than  tranquilizing ;  it  poured  forth  an  eternal  note 
of  sadness,  and  he,  the  sensitive  man,  responded  in  kind,  deep 
calling  unto  deep.  And  if  you  will  turn  to  that  matchless  series  of 
melodious  lamentations,  the  "In  Memoriam"  of  Tennyson,  you 
will  find  quantities  of  the  same  thing ;  a  rhyming  of  the  soul  of  man 
with  the  soul  of  the  universe ;  a  making  Nature  rhyme  with  the 
mind  of  man  ;  a  willingness  of  Nature  to  be  thus  rhymed ;  an 
infinite  flexibility  on  her  part  to  human  use. 

For  she  is  ready  to  match  his  every  mood.     Not  merely  does 
she  glide 

Into  his  darker  musings  with  a  mild 

And  gentle  sympathy,  that  steals  away 

Their  sharpness  ere  he  is  aware — 
but, 

For  his  gayer  hours 

She  has  a  voice  of  gladness,  and  a  smile 

And  eloquence  of  beauty. 

And  I  know  no  better  illustration  of  the  idea  that  Nature  adjusts 
herself  to  us  manifoldly,  according  as  our  mental  states  and  moods 
manifold  themselves  and  need  her,  than  the  closing  lines  of  that 
great  poem  of  Browning,  entitled  "Saul."  King  Saul  had  been  in 
one  of  his  almost  or  quite  insane  moods,  and,  as  usual,  young 
David,  the  shepherd  and  harpist,  had  been  sent  for  to  soothe  him 
by  his  music ;  and  he  did  soothe  him,  and  brought  him  back  to 
rational  life  once  more,  and  to  his  great  duties  as  king  of  Israel. 
But,  in  this  musical  work,  David  himself  had  worked  up  into  a  truly 
divine  and  wonderful  exaltation.  He  was  profoundly  inspired  by 
the  things  he  sung.  He  became  a  seer,  in  fact,  and  clearly  saw  the 
far-away  great  Son  of  David  who  was  to  be  the  Redeemer  of  the 
world.  Saul  had  a  dark  demon  in  him,  and  David,  in  his  struggle 
to  expel  that  demon,  had  felt  himself  in  conflict  with  the  whole 
kingdom  of  night  and  hell,  the  unseen  persons  and  powers  that 
infest  the  creation  and  all  take  a  hand  in  the  fight  whensoever  one 
of  their  crew  is  attacked ;  precisely  as  the  final  great  Son  of  David 


SERMONS.  575 

was  to  feel  when  He  should  come  into  the  world  to  judge  and  cast 
out  the  infernal  Prince  of  this  world.  But  David  conquered,  I  say. 
The  demon  was  cast  out,  and  the  dark  powers  of  the  creation  were 
mightily  stirred  up  by  it,  and  David,  on  his  way  home  that 
night,  felt  them  all  about  him  in  a  weird  way.  All  customary  sights 
and  sounds  revealed  them.     Hear  him  describe  it. 

I  know  not  too  well  how  I  found  my  way  home  in  the  night. 

There  were  witnesses,  cohorts  about  me,  to  left  and  to  right, 

Angels,  powers,  the  unuttered,  unseen,  the  alive — the  aware — 

I  repressed,  I  got  through  them  as  hardly,  as  strugglingly  there, 

As  a  runner  beset  by  the  populace  famished  for  news — 

Life  or  death.     The  whole  earth  was  awakened,  hell  loosed  with  her  crews; 

And  the  stars  of  night  beat  with  emotion,  and  tingled  and  shot 

Out  in  fire  the  strong  pain  of  pent  knowledge :  but  I  fainted  not. 

For  the  Hand  still  impelled  me  at  once  and  supported — suppressed 

All  the  tumult,  and  quenched  it  with  quiet,  and  holy  behest, 

Till  the  rapture  was  shut  in  itself,  and  the  earth  sank  to  rest. 

Then  David  goes  on  to  say  how,  in  the  morning,  the  benignant 
powers  of  the  universe  came  to  the  front ;  the  bright  kingdom  in 
behalf  of  which  he  had  made  his  contest  against  the  demon  in  Saul ; 
though,  you  must  understand,  these  bright  powers  are  not  rejoicing 
oVer  David's  victory  merely,  but  are  rejoicing  anticipatively,  and  in 
clear  assurance  over  the  like,  but  larger,  victory  of  Jesus  Son  of 
David,  in  fullness  of  time.  Their  jubilee  on  this  occasion  is  three 
times  a  jubilee  on  that  account.  Listen  to  David  again,  and  see 
David  and  the  redeemed  creation  mix  in  together,  dance  together, 
shout  together,  and  be  one,  thus  : 

Anon  at  the  dawn,  all  that  trouble  had  withered  from  earth — 

.     .     .     .     I  saw  it  die  out  in  the  day's  tender  birth; 

In  the  gathered  intensity  brought  to  the  gray  of  the  hills; 

In  the  shuddering  forest's  new  awe;   in  the  sudden  wind-thrills; 

In  the  startled  wild  beasts  that  bore  off,  each  with  eye  sidling  still 

Tho'  averted,  in  wonder  and  dread;   and  the  birds  stiff  and  chill 

That  rose  heavily,  as  I  approached  them,  made  stupid  with  awe. 

E'en  the  serpent  that  slid  away  silent, — he  felt  the  new  Law. 

The  same  stared  in  the  white  humid  faces  upturned  by  the  flowers; 

The  same  worked  in  the  heart  of  the  cedar,  and  moved  the  vine-bowers. 

And  the  little  brooks  witnessing  murmured,  persistent  and  low, 

With  their  obstinate,  all  but  hushed  voices, — E'en  so !  it  is  so. 

Dear  friends,  I  wish  we  all  had  the  vigor  to  use  great  Nature 
in  that  masterly  and  effectual  way.     She  waits  to  be  used.     Be  you 


576  SERMONS. 

exalted  like  David,  demonized  like  Saul,  bereaved  like  him  whose 
friend  died  in  May,  surcharged  with  adoration  like  him  who  wrote  : 
"  The  heavens  declare  the  glory  of  God  and  the  firmament  showeth 
His  handywork ;"  or  joyful  in  an  overruling  providence  like  him 
who  said  :  "  Consider  the  lilies  how  they  grow,  they  toil  not,  they 
spin  not,  and  yet  I  say  unto  you  that  even  Solomon  in  all  his  glory 
was  not  arrayed  like  one  of  these" — be  you  in  almost  any  state  of 
mind,  I  say,  God's  creation  is  able  to  speak  to  you  in  terms  suited 
to  your  case,  and  give  you  terms  wherein  to  vent  your  pent-up 
seership,  insanity,  mourning,  hope,  worship,  or  whatever  it  may  be  ; 
your  pent-up  self  being  apt  to  be  in  that  way  relieved  always  ;  for, 
while  ordinary  words  spoken  by  us  in  expression  of  the  fire  in  us 
do  often  but  inflame  that  fire,  these  other  words,  the  objects 
and  motions  of  Nature,  being  brought  in  to  express  what  is  in  us, 
do  tend  to  appease  all  unpardonable  fires,  and  at  the  same  time 
to  feed  the  better  fires  of  the  soul. 

And  so  I  am  not  ashamed  to  have  made  a  plea  for  her  here, 
this  morning. 


THE  COMING  OF  CHRIST. 


Delivered  at  the  Park  Church,  Hartford,  Dec.  26,  1866. 


And,  behold,  there  was  a  man  in  yerusalem,  whose  name  was  Simeon  ; 
and  the  same  man  was  just  and  devout,  waiting  for  the  consolation  of  Israel  : 
and  the  Holy  Ghost  was  upon  him.  And  it  was  revealed  unto  him  by  the 
Holy  Ghost,  that  he  should  not  see  death,  before  he  had  seen  the  Lord's  Christ. 
And  he  came  by  the  Spirit  into  the  temple;  and  when  the  parents  brought  in 
the  child  Jesus,  to  do  for  him  after  the  custom  of  the  law.  Then  took  he  him 
up  in  his  arms,  and  blessed  God,  and  said, 

Lord,  now  lettest  thou  thy  servant  depart  in  peace,  according  to  thy  word  : 

For  mine  eyes  have  seen  thy  salvation, 
Which  thou  hast  prepared  before  the  face  of  all  people  ; 

A  light  to  lighten  the  Gentiles,  and  the  glory  of  thy  people  Israel. 

—Luke  ii,  25-33. 

It  is  on  some  accounts  difficult  for  us  to  fully  and  with  full 
feeling  understand  the  great  and  peculiar  joy  of  this  good  old  man, 
taking  Mary's  holy  babe  in  his  arms.  For  the  coming  of  Christ  is 
no  longer  a  new  thing,  and  to  us  moderns  just  as  familiar  as  sunrise 
and  sunset.  It  is  even  a  trite  thing  to  hearts  unrenewed.  It  has 
been  a  theme  of  all  pulpits  in  all  the  Christian  generations.  It  has 
been  celebrated  anew  as  each  year  came  round.  It  is  the  burden  of 
many  an  oft-repeated  chant  and  of  hymns  almost  without  number. 
It  has  passed  into  the  customary  thinking  of  Christendom,  and  has 
domesticated  itself  in  the  feeling  of  the  civilized  world.  And  the 
result  is,  some  effort  is  required  to  place  ourselves  in  the  exact 
position  of  a  godly  Jew  who  has  suddenly  met  in  the  temple,  and 
in  the  form  of  a  little  child,  him  on  whom  his  heart  had  for  long 
years  been  set,  who  had  been  the  hope  of  his  days  and  the  dream 
of  his  nights,  Jesus,  the  consolation  of  Israel  and  the  light  which 
should  lighten  the  Gentiles. 


578  SERMONS. 

But,  with  a  view  to  possess  ourselves  of  Simeon's  feeling  a 
little,  let  us  consider  a  moment  how  the  case  stood  and  what  were 
the  special  causes  which  wrought  in  him  and  lent  their  fire  to  this 
day  of  his  rejoicing. 

God  had  toiled  for  thousands  of  years  to  raise  the  Jewish 
people  to  just  this  state  of  eagerness  as  to  the  incoming  of  this 
babe.  He  had  instituted  a  whole  typical  economy  wherewith, 
enforced  by  never-ending  iteration,  he  would  profoundly  indoc- 
trinate the  nation  in  the  idea  of  a  deliverer  about  to  visit  the  earth. 
He  promulged  a  bright  hint  on  the  subject,  a  vague  suggestive 
omen,  at  the  very  starting-point  of  human  history.  And  from  that 
he  went  on  from  prophet  to  prophet,  announcing  his  purpose  more 
and  more  clearly,  speaking  of  a  distinguished  personage  to  appear, 
and  putting  in  feature  after  feature  of  his  life  and  character,  setting 
him  forth  in  gladsome  images  and  grand  outbursts  of  poetry,  mak- 
ing the  old  records  glow  and  sing  wherever  they  spoke  of  him  ;  as 
though,  when  the  time  came,  the  heavens  were  to  open  and  let 
down  such  a  benediction  as  no  Hebrew  bard,  though  full  of  the 
Holy  Ghost  and  of  power,  could  adequately  set  forth  in  any  such 
stinted  terminology  as  the  poor  languages  of  earth  can  afford. 

And  then,  side  by  side  with  all  this  external  drill,  through  eye 
and  ear  and  wondering  sense,  God  carried  forward  a  more  secret 
effort  bearing  to  the  same  end.  As  now,  when  his  chosen  truth  is 
preached  and  his  appointed  ordinances  are  observed,  and  all  the 
objectivities  of  the  Gospel  are  operated  and  made  a  form  of  exer- 
cise for  the  people,  he  goes  with  them  by  the  Holy  Ghost  to 
prepare  the  mind  for  their  full  effect,  and  thus  renders  powerful  and 
victorious  what,  except  for  this  inward  and  invisible  work,  would 
be  as  futile  as  the  displaying  of  pictures  before  the  eyes  of  a  blind 
man,  or  the  tuneful  thunder  of  organs  in  the  dull  ears  of  the  deaf; 
so  in  the  times  of  old,  when  prophets  spoke  and  priests  shed  sacri- 
ficial blood,  and  the  sacred  pageantries  of  Judaism  moved  before 
the  vision  of  the  people,  he  accompanied  this  impressive  outward 
by  influences  unseen,  by  the  Holy  Spirit  (we  should  say),  soften- 
ing the  natural  hardness  of  the  mind,  relieving  its  obtuseness, 
quickening  its  power  of  reception,  opening  it  to  those  great  pre- 
monitions which  that  ever-present  externalism  was  fitted  to  convey ; 
so  that  by  a  double  instigation  and  illumination,  that  first  on  the 
sense  and  secondly  that  on  the  heart,  the  docile  Jew  was  led  gradu- 
ally along  into  the  full  strength  of  the  Messianic  hope.     And  how 


SERMONS.  579 

strong  that  hope  would  naturally  be,  you  can  see,  I  think,  from  a 
consideration  of  these  causes  just  named.  By  them  the  ante- 
Christian  ages  were  made  to  be  one  long,  tremendous  gestation 
wherein  Christ,  the  desire  of  all  nations,  moved  forward  to  the 
birth. 

And  it  is  reasonable  to  suppose  that  this  mighty  Hebrew  hope 
waxed  with  the  increasing  centuries ;  partly  because  the  voices  of 
the  prophets  rang  clearer,  but  not  for  that  reason  alone.  No,  but 
experience  tells  us  that  an  old  hope  is  the  strongest  by  virtue  of  a 
law  within  itself.  When  I  look  forward  to  some  pleasant  thing  I 
am  glad,  but  when  the  weeks  of  waiting  grow  few,  my  heart  rises  to 
an  intenser  expectation,  and  when  I  reach  the  immediate  eve  of  the 
joy  my  feeling  is  so  deep  and  tremulous  as  to  drive  sleep  from  my 
eyes,  maybe,  and  I  am  wearied  and  wasted  by  my  so  ardent  fore- 
looking.  Thus  we  have  all  found  it  often  and  often.  Well  then, 
take  a  national  hope  that  has  stood  and  waited  for  a  thousand  years, 
and  to  what  fervency  must  it  have  come  !  It  has  been  handed 
down  from  father  to  son.  Mothers  have  whiled  away  the  days  in 
reciting  it  to  their  children.  It  has  been  an  element  in  the  very 
blood  of  the  people,  which  each  ancestor  has  transmitted  to  his 
posterity.  It  has  been  the  most  golden  legacy  of  one  generation 
to  the  other.  It  has  stood  with  face  bent  on  that  nearing  future, 
not  sick  and  weary  through  long  delay,  but  kept  up  by  assurances 
undeniable  that  the  bright  day  would  come.  And  how  inveterate 
at  last,  how  wrought  into  the  soul's  substance  and  what  a  fascina- 
tion, must  that  expectation  be  !  Behold  the  Jew  of  to-day  with  his 
most  ancient  hope,  as  inseparable,  he  and  it,  as  thought  is  insep- 
arable from  a  thinking  substance,  so  that  when  we  say  Jew  we 
always  include  under  the  term  that  long-established,  unweary  and 
impregnable  hope — the  centre  of  their  faith  and  the  most  ineradi- 
cable fibre  in  their  singular  constitution. 

And  for  still  another  reason  besides  its  age,  must  the  anticipa- 
tion and  desire  of  Israel  have  strengthened  as  the  day  drew  nigh. 
For  is  it  not  likely  that  God,  as  the  old  world's  affairs  were  con- 
verging to  the  shining  crisis,  as  all  currents  were  streaming  down 
towards  the  advent,  as  the  nations,  both  sacred  and  profane,  were, 
though  in  blind  unconsciousness  for  the  most  part,  preparing  the 
fullness  of  time,  is  it  not  likely,  I  say,  that  as  this  majestic  process 
went  on  and  the  Lord's  anointed  actually  approached,  God  would 
move  on  human  hearts  by  his  Spirit  more  and  more  signally,  in 


580  SERMONS. 

order  that  the  feeling  of  man  might  keep  pace  with  the  steady 
progress  of  outward  events?  Would  God  through  his  providence 
lead  forward  all  affairs  to  the  issue,  and  the  incoming  of  the 
Christian  period,  and  at  the  same  time  leave  the  mind  of  his  Israel 
and  the  hope  of  his  chosen  people  stationary  and  behind  every- 
thing else  ?  Nay,  God  works  harmoniously  with  himself,  and  what 
he  performs  in  one  field  of  exertion  he  is  sure  to  support  in 
another,  moving  down  the  ages  in  parallel  lines  of  effort,  his  provi- 
dence in  nature  and  his  providence  in  the  realm  of  spirit  being  in 
full  accord,  and  as  true  yoke-fellows  pushing  two  diverse  but 
co-efficient  industries  on  and  forward  to  the  same  result.  If  Mes- 
siah was  close  at  hand  then,  it  is  probable  God  would,  by  direct 
influences  on  all  susceptible  souls,  emphasize  unusually  that  sublime 
historic  hope.  And  the  people  generally  would  be  in  a  more  than 
common  fervor  of  expectation.  And  in  such  men  as  this  Simeon, 
so  lofty  in  his  faith  and  spirituality  and  patience,  the  general  hope 
would  naturally  make  head  and  throb  into  a  keen  eagerness,  a  holy 
enthusiasm.  The  prophetic  centuries  would  culminate  in  them  and 
their  longing.  As  the  spirit  of  an  era  is  embodied  in  a  few  foremost 
and  finely-endowed  men,  their  brains  being  the  concentrated  centre 
and  capital  of  its  brightest  thoughts,  and  their  efforts  and  lives 
being  the  chief  and  most  telling  expression  of  its  drift  and  aspira- 
tion ;  so  these  Simeons  and  Annas,  cloistered  with  God,  and  living 
a  life  open  to  his  grace,  stood  out  in  the  far  foreground  of  the 
Hebrew  ages  as  the  most  consummate  exponents  of  the  one 
master-thought  of  all  those  ages.  All  previous  longing  reached 
full  sea  in  them.  All  the  tremulous  eagerness  of  the  devout  mil- 
lions who  had  died,  was  summed  in  their  ardor.  As  the  great 
cave  on  the  shore  takes  up  into  itself  the  whole  fullness  of  the  ocean 
and,  in  one  hollow  thunder,  voices  the  commingled  roar  of  its 
leagues  and  leagues  of  waves ;  so  these  great  saints  took  up  into 
themselves  the  fullness  of  the  joy  of  all  the  old  times,  and  voiced  it 
in  these  outbursts  of  gratitude  as  they  watched  the  first  glimmer  of 
the  day-star,  and  then  sprang  to  their  feet  with  Hosanna  upon 
Hosanna,  as  it  broke  effulgent  o'er  the  mountain-top. 

Remember  also,  as  explanatory  of  Simeon's  feeling,  that  the 
Jewish  nation  at  that  time,  although  desiring  the  Messiah  as  never 
before,  had  sunk  from  the  pure  spiritual  idea  which  seems  to  have 
animated  their  prophets  of  long  ago,  and  had  taken  instead  a  more 
carnal    and   earth-like    thing — the    expectation,  namely,   that    the 


SERMONS.  581 

promised  One  would  be  a  National  King  and  a  man  of  war  to  re-in- 
state the  now  subject  Jew  in  the  imperial  dignities  he  held  in  the 
days  of  old.  As  opposed  to  this  ignoble  conception,  Simeon  and 
such  as  he  stood  lights  in  a  dark  place  and  their  feeling  flamed 
higher  within  them  by  virtue  of  the  contrast  wherewith  they  were 
encompassed,  there  being  nothing  better  fitted  to  attach  a  man  to 
a  chosen  idea  and  to  give  it  moment  and  value  before  his  own 
mind  than  a  consciousness  of  isolation  in  the  possession  of  that 
idea,  all  other  men  standing  in  dissent  therefrom.  As  others 
wearied  their  eyes  looking  for  an  earthly  monarch,  so  the  more 
passionately  did  they  fix  their  hopes  on  a  better  kingdom.  As 
there  were  none  on  the  face  of  the  earth  with  whom  to  share  their 
noble  expectation,  they  had  nothing  to  do  but  brood  their  precious 
idea  and  commune  therewith,  and  the  more  it  was  brooded  the 
greater  it  grew,  till  like  a  good  demon  it  possessed  them  and  was 
the  key  to  their  whole  experience  and  life. 

Recollect  also  the  curiosity  as  to  the  near  Messiah,  which  in 
the  last  days  of  Judaism  must  have  filled  the  good  men  of  the 
nation.  We  have  an  honest  curiosity,  a  sharp  hunger  of  the  mind, 
to  see  the  ascended  Christ ;  a  curiosity,  I  mean,  not  founded  on 
gratitude  and  an  affectionate  remembrance  of  what  he  has  done 
for  us  and  for  man — no,  but  founded  on  a  primitive  instinct  of  the 
intellect.  We  should  like  to  see  him  whose  name  so  fills  the 
annals  of  man  and  is  so  shining  among  the  great  names  of  the 
world  and  the  generations.  We  have  heard  so  much  of  him,  we 
have  read  so  much  of  him,  we  have  seen  so  many  hundreds  going 
about  in  praise  of  him  and  in  fulfillment  of  a  discipleship  under 
him,  we  have  known  of  so  many  dying  for  him,  the  earth  is  so  full 
of  memorials  and  mighty  monuments  of  him  and  his  career,  that  it 
would  be  a  memorable  and  thrilling  day  to  us  could  we  see  him 
once  face  to  face.  And  thus,  precisely,  must  curiosity  have  stirred 
in  the  soul  of  Simeon,  and  in  all  Jewry  in  fact.  For  there  was  no 
one  whom  they  had  heard  mentioned  so  much.  Their  Scriptures 
were  full  of  it.  Their  religion  was  full  of  it.  No  one  held  so  lordly 
a  place  in  the  chronicles  of  their  race.  Their  kings  from  of  old 
had  uncrowned  themselves  before  the  majesty  of  this  as  yet  unborn 
personage.  In  the  days  when  Jerusalem  was  a  queen  and  her 
magnificence  outshone  every  other  earthly  splendor,  her  wise  men 
and  teachers  were  proclaiming  another  day  when,  Shiloh  having 
come,  a  kingdom  should  be  set  up,  in  the  glory  of  whose  magnifi- 


582  SERMONS. 

cence  that  time  should  fade  away  and  be  remembered  no  more . 
And,  in  view  of  all  this  historic  iteration  of  his  great  name,  it  must 
be  that  Simeon  felt  himself  under  a  spell,  and  a  personal  magnet- 
ism as  it  were,  and  watched  with  a  curiosity  inexpressible  for  this 
one  called,  "Wonderful,  Counsellor,  the  Mighty  God,  the  Everlast- 
ing Father,  the  Prince  of  Peace." 

Putting  all  causes  together  then,  and  recollecting  everything 
which  wrought  on  this  devout  man's  mind,  do  we  not  begin  to 
understand  and  appreciate  his  satisfaction  on  meeting  the  infant 
Redeemer,  and  being  told  on  so  high  authority  as  that  of  the  Holy 
Ghost,  and  so  impressively  that  he  could  not  doubt  it,  and  believed 
it  with  all  his  heart,  that  that  little  child,  held  in  a  mortal  mother's 
arms,  was  Shiloh,  Messiah,  Wonderful,  Counsellor,  the  Mighty  God, 
the  Everlasting  Father,  the  Prince  of  Peace,  the  Desire  of  all  nations, 
the  Key  to  all  time,  the  Conqueror  over  death,  hell  and  the  grave, 
and  the  One  whose  hands  hold  the  gates  of  eternal  glory  !  'Twas 
fit  that  Simeon  should  be  glad,  and  that  Anna,  holy  prophetess  of 
God,  should  be  glad  and  grow  young  again  in  the  midst  of  her 
four-score  years  and  four,  and  that  they  both  should  speak  and 
testify  aloud  in  the  sanctuary,  of  the  felicity  which  was  crowning 
their  old  age,  and  of  the  good  news  which  was  unto  all  people  and 
was  to  inaugurate  time's  latest  and  most  blessed  age. 

And  now  let  me  say,  that  in  order  to  our  entering  into  the  full 
fellowship  of  their  joy  and  establishing  ourselves  in  their  spirit  of 
gratitude,  thus  rendering  ourselves  brethren  and  fellow-saints  with 
the  whole  chosen  host  of  our  God  from  Abraham  of  the  far  morn 
down  all  the  happy  ages  of  grace — in  order  to  this,  two  courses  of 
effort  lie  open  to  us,  which  I  mention  in  the  way  of  addition  to  the 
considerations  I  have  just  now  been  offering,  as  fitted  to  bring  us 
heart  to  heart  with  the  just  and  devout  men  of  the  time  of  Simeon. 
Two  forms  and  courses  of  effort. 

First.  As  Simeon's  mind  did,  day  by  day,  doubtless  run  back 
and  recount  the  signs,  types  and  prophecies  of  the  approaching 
Redeemer,  with  which  their  past  was  crowded  and  glorified ;  and 
as  he  thus  fed  the  fires  of  his  inward  life  and  managed  to  keep 
himself  alive  and  true  and  in  a  steady,  calm,  heroism  of  confidence, 
in  the  midst  of  a  too  general  decay  of  godliness ;  so  we  may  tra- 
verse these  two  thousand  fruitful  years  which  have  unrolled  them- 
selves since  that  day,  "  the  years  of  our  Lord  "  as  it  is  our  habit  and 
delight  to  call  them,  and  musing  upon  the  cheerful  particulars  of 


SERMONS.  583 

that  new  era  we  may  warm  ourselves  to  a  heat  which  any  Jew 
aforetime  could  hardly  know,  and  may  refresh  and  stay  ourselves 
upon  Christian  facts  which  are  real  prophets  all,  and  as  significant 
of  a  fair  future  yet  to  come,  as  the  words  of  Hebrew  seers  were 
significant  of  a  Messiah  : — and  thus  by  virtue  of  a  history  such  as 
Simeon  could  not  recall,  we  may  serve  our  own  souls  and  build 
ourselves  up,  and  stand  and  rejoice  to  stand  for  God  in  our  place 
and  time,  thus  joining  hands  with  all  who  have  gone  before  and 
making  ourselves  part  of  that  august  brotherhood  and  empire  of 
redeemed  souls. 

And  what  say  these  years  and  centuries  of  our  Lord  ?  Would 
to  God  we  had  them  within  our  grasp,  by  a  specific  and  exhaustive 
historic  knowledge,  that  every  jot  and  tittle  of  their  untold  mass  of 
details  was  gathered  into  our  strong  memory,  each  event  which  has 
transpired,  each  Christian  who  has  lived  and  served  the  common 
Master,  all  the  wars  of  tongue,  pen  and  sword  our  conquering  faith 
has  waged,  all  the  legislation  in  God's  name,  all  the  disasters  which 
turned  themselves  to  blessings  as  the  years  ran,  all  the  fierce 
struggles  of  heavenly  ideas  to  subdue  the  reluctant  race  ;  and  above 
everything  else,  would  to  God  we  knew  as  he  does  and  could  dis- 
play as  he  can  the  profound  purpose,  the  religious  meaning, 
tendency  and  function  of  each  period  and  great  movement  from 
the  day  that  the  child  Messiah  came  suddenly  into  the  temple  until 
now.  Then  we  would  re-collect  the  past,  and  read  the  brilliant 
pages  of  these  years,  after  a  manner  and  with  an  intelligence  in 
some  sort  commensurate  with  their  moment.  I  think  it  will  be  one 
of  the  sweetest  employments  of  our  eternal  life,  to  take  up  the  now 
half-veiled  history  of  earth,  and  read  it  in  the  blaze  of  that  day, 
finding  God  in  it  .all,  and  seeing  in  vision,  particular  and  explicit 
at  last,  how  all  the  days,  centuries  and  periods  were  strung  as  so 
many  jewels  on  one  cord,  coherent  all,  and  all  precious  by  virtue  of 
one  great  decree  which  threads  the  ages,  held  fast  at  one  end  in 
God's  almighty  hand,  and  fastened  at  the  other  to  the  great  goal 
and  post  whereto  we  tend. 

■  But  look  back  in  an  exceedingly  general  and  cursory  way. 
Number  the  converts  our  Saviour  has  made.  Before  Simeon's 
day  they  stood  as  scattered,  lonely  lights,  of  little  general  account 
except  as  they  were  forerunners  of  a  fairer  time ;  but  now  that 
fairer  time  has  come,  or  has  begun  to  come ;  those  scattered  lights 
stand  thick  now,  and  here  and  there  they  are   multiplied  into  a 


584  SERMONS. 

broad,  continuous  brightness.  The  night  does  perceptibly  give  way 
before  them.  And  down  through  the  past  we  see  them  shine  ;  and 
the  silent  ages  now  gone  get  their  chief  interest  and  splendor  from 
them.  In  the  days  of  the  apostles,  disciples  came,  as  the  Spring 
rains  come,  in  outpoured  and  abounding  tides.  Three  thousand  in 
one  day,  was  the  way  those  doves  flocked  to  their  windows.  Not 
three  thousand  every  day,  I  know,  but  great  numbers  for  all  that — 
exceeding  great,  considering  the  dreadful  obstacles  which  beset  a 
life  of  faith  in  that  primitive  time.  After  that  came  declines,  and 
then  recoveries — and  thus  on  and  on,  in  alternate  lulls  and  gales, 
God's  winds  did  blow.  Now  the  earth  was  almost  a  desert,  and 
then,  a  little  later,  it  grew  green  and  bloomed  and  mighty  harvests 
waved.  Now  the  world  seemed  cut  off  from  the  heavenly  springs, 
and  again  they  were  opened  and  everywhere  ran  the  fertile  streams. 
But  when  you  estimate  and  sum  the  spiritual  income  from  those 
inconstant  generations,  behold  !  what  a  number,  what  a  church 
when  all  assembled,  as  they  all  are  now,  what  a  song  when  they  all 
sing  with  the  eternal  redemption  for  their  theme,  what  a  white  light 
they  shed  when  they  move  all  in  the  white  robes  of  their  purity ; 
and  what  a  substantial  inauguration  our  Lord  would  have  even  at 
this  present  time,  were  he  to  cease  from  the  earthly  toils  of  his 
grace  right  at  this  point,  shut  forever  the  earthward  gates  of 
heaven,  and,  thus  closed  in,  gather  about  him  the  pomps  of  the 
final  coronation. 

Think  also  how  many  millions  of  men  who,  although  not 
saved,  have  notwithstanding  been  touched  and  civilized,  and 
brought  to  a  finer  humanity  by  contact  with  these  living  souls  of 
God.  An  item  this,  which  we  do  not  always  remember  when  judg- 
ing of  the  work  of  Christ  in  the  world.  Beyond,  outside  of  the 
full  influence  of  Christ  on  human  souls,  is  a  vast  encircling  penum- 
bra of  beneficient  influence ;  or  a  scattered  reaching  out  of  the 
forces  of  grace  into  the  land  of  the  enemy,  beyond  the  outmost 
pickets  of  the  armies  of  the  Most  High.  And  thus  in  old  times, 
how  the  barbarities  of  heathenism  were  mitigated,  how  the  outward 
lives  of  men  were  restrained  and  purified,  how  the  excellent  chari- 
ties of  the  Gospel  were  diffused  and  made  a  precious  element  in 
social  life,  how  false  ideas  were  rectified,  how  the  grasp  of  strong 
superstitions  firm-fixed  upon  the  fears  of  men  was  enfeebled,  how 
rude  tastes  were  exalted  and  savage  asperities  assuaged,  and  how  in 
ways  numberless  the  unregenerate  populations  were  molded  for  the 


SERMONS.  585 

better  in  this  life,  although  God's  grace  did  not  reach  to  their 
deepest  hearts  and  did  not  gird  them  for  the  valley  of  the  shadow 
of  death  and  for  the  eternity  beyond. 

See  this  same  thing  illustrated  in  this  later  day.  To  enumerate 
the  sons  of  God  now  living  is  very  easy,  for  they  are  few  by  the 
side  of  the  thousand  millions  who  fill  the  earth ;  and  yet  the  influ- 
ence of  these  few  is  as  broad  as  civilization,  and  will  soon  be 
coextensive  with  the  race.  Look  at  the  American  people.  How 
many  Christians  are  there  here  ?  Only  a  too  small  fraction  of  our 
thirty  millions.  But  that  fraction  is  so  strong  as  to  cause  all  the 
rest  to  assume  for  themselves  the  general  name  of  Christian.  And 
Christian  they  are,  by  a  thin  varnish  at  least. 

See  how  it  works.  All  the  people  pay  a  certain  respect  to  the 
ordinances  and  institutions  of  Christianity.  When  their  political 
conventions  are  gathered,  they  are  pleased,  rather  than  otherwise, 
to  have  some  clergyman  at  hand  to  call  upon  God  for  his  blessing. 
Congress  must  have  its  chaplains ;  the  minor  legislative  assemblies 
must  seek  God's  face  and  smile  before  they  begin  the  day ;  in  the 
army  and  in  the  navy  prayers  must  be  offered,  the  people  think, 
prayers  in  Christ's  name,  too,  every  one  of  them  ;  no  chaplain  could 
hold  his  place  a  minute  if  he  approached  the  eternal  throne  in  any 
other  name  than  that.  And  if  the  worst  citizen  we  have  was  about 
to  be  married,  he  would  probably  choose  to  put  the  act  under  a 
religious  sanction  and  have  some  minister  beseech  the  Lord  to 
ratify  the  deed.  And  do  we  not  all  wish  to  be  borne  to  the  burial 
and  laid  down  to  our  cold,  dark  sleep  in  the  use  of  Gospel  rites  ? 
How  Christian  the  slow  procession  as  it  moves  through  the  streets, 
silently  and  accompanied  by  the  tender  respect  of  all  the  peopled 
way.  That  hush  along  the  whole  line,  that  tardy  motion,  as  in  love 
and  gentleness  towards  the  dead,  that  pause  or  half-pause  of 
thoughtful  wayfarers  as  in  sorrow  for  those  who  weep  and  in  pity  of 
a  brother  man  broken  down  and  slain  in  the  battle  of  life,  and  in 
solemn  remembrance  of  their  own  last  day,  that  sad  decorum  with 
which  the  whole  thing  proceeds, — all  these  have  in  them  more  or 
less  a  Christian  element.  And  then  the  sequestered  field  of  graves, 
how  Christian  the  spot !  One  side  of  the  world's  noise,  its 
silence  broken  only  by  the  step  of  the  mourner,  or  of  the  man 
who  would  wander  for  a  little  in  reflective  mood  along  the  borders 
of  eternity  ;  its  heavy  evergreens  lifting  up  their  perpetual  prophecy 
of  the  immortal  Spring  in  that  other  land ;  its  memorials  of  stone 
38 


586  SERMONS. 

and  marble  and  brass,  a  sign,  each  one  of  them,  of  the  brotherhood 
of  man  and  of  the  new  ties  by  which  all  souls  are  knit  to  brother 
souls  since  Jesus  has  come ;  its  innumerable  Scriptures  chiseled 
here  and  there  which  in  their  momentous  significance  are  as  the 
never-ending  flow  of  grave,  grand  melodies  over  the  dead,  with  now 
and  then  a  victorious  hallelujah  intermingled,  so  that  the  song  of 
the  winds  murmuring  in  summer  days  and  mourning  hoarse  in  the 
desolate  autumn,  or  roaring  down  the  landscape  in  the  wild  winter,  is 
nothing  near  so  imperial  a  chant ;  the  groups,  too,  uncovered  about 
open  graves,  while  under  the  broad  sky  Christianity  lifts  up  her 
voice  and  recites  her  venerable  forms,  her  warnings,  prophecies  and 
benedictions ;  how  Christian,  how  Christian  all  this,  I  say  !  And 
in  our  woefullest  wickedness  these  beautiful  usages  still  possess  our 
feeling,  and  when  we  die  we  all  want  the  Gospel  to  bury  us.  And 
this  nearly  universal  desire  is  an  indication  how  far  beyond  the 
actual  church  the  Scriptural  leaven  has  extended. 

And  there  be  other  signs  of  it.  Before  the  onset  of  Christ's 
new  law  of  love,  our  legislation  has  gradually  relaxed  its  unreason- 
able severities,  our  prisons  are  not  the  hells  they  used  to  be,  our 
hospitals  lift  themselves  on  every  side,  our  very  manners,  too,  are 
shaped  by  Christian  doctrine,  our  conception  of  the  rights  of 
man  is  advanced.  Christianity  made  this  very  war  in  which  we  are 
so  slaughtered ;  she  has  taken  the  sword  to  vindicate  her  generous 
ideas,  operating  through  mean  men  a  good  deal  to  be  sure,  and 
therefore  in  some  risk  of  a  temporary  failure,  but  mighty  to  raise 
commotions,  a  genuine  mother  of  storms  through  all  the  future,  for 
all  that.  Christianity  controls  our  press.  There  is  scarcely  an 
editor  in  the  country  who  dares  put  his  journal  avowedly  on  the 
side  of  Antichrist,  even  if  he  wants  to.  Even  our  Jews  are  for 
Christ ;  all  is  they  want  to  be  sure  which  is  he.  Our  very  blas- 
phemies are  an  incidental  proof  of  the  presence  and  omnipresence 
of  Christ,  for  men  do  not  any  longer  say  "By  Jupiter,"  or  "By 
Hercules,"  and  the  like,  very  much ;  but  'tis  his  dear  name  they 
desecrate.  And  then,  not  speaking  of  our  own  people  particularly, 
but  of  all  civilized  countries,  how  the  tastes  of  men  are  meliorated  ; 
how  ashamed  they  all  are  to  go  to  war  for  mere  ambition's  sake, 
and  how  sure  they  are,  when  about  to  commit  that  great  crime,  to 
so  far  defer  to  the  self-evident  truth  and  nobility  of  Christ's  ideas 
as  to  pretend  they  are  set  to  champion  assaulted  or  imperiled  just- 
ice, the  rights  of  God  and  the  weal  of  man.     It  is  a  great  thing 


SERMONS.  587 

gained  when  a  villain  is  forced  to  disguise  himself  in  the  decent 
robe  of  honesty.  Look,  moreover,  at  the  festivities  of  this  annual 
Christmas  week.  What  do  they  signify  ?  These  public  assemblies, 
where  saint  and  sinner  sit  together  and  are  both  cheerful,  though  in 
different  ways  and  degrees  ;  these  churches  decorated  with  all  that 
the  winter  has  left  of  the  green  year,  these  family  meetings,  these 
gifts,  this  household  mirth  and  plenty,  these  universal  greetings 
and  benedictions,  this  opening  of  all  hearts  as  though  the  very 
devils  were  touched  for  once  by  the  finger  of  the  Messiah — what  do 
they  mean  ?  Why  they  mean  that  Christ  has  come,  and  that  the 
hilarity  of  the  church  at  the  advent  of  her  Lord  has  so  overrun  as 
to  infect  all  others  with  a  certain  semblance  of  her  own  joy,  until 
the  race  exults  as  though  it  were  unanimously  safe  in  the  kingdom 
of  grace.  And  these  commemorations  do  certainly  have  a  use 
upon  the  unchristian  multitude,  and  deserve  to  be  mentioned  as 
one  feature  in  the  general  Gospel  aspect  of  the  modern  world. 

Remember  again  how  much  has  come  to  be  done,  by  saint 
and  sinner  both,  in  the  way  of  missionary  work  in  behalf  of  the  still 
unevangelized  communities  of  the  globe.  Lo  !  Christ  is  here 
surely  and  has  been  long  moving  in  the  midst  of  men,  occupying 
the  successive  ages  by  his  industries,  and  gradually  forming  the 
nations  to  his  praise ;  else  why  this  baptized  zeal,  this  giving  of 
goods,  this  consecrating  of  sons  and  daughters,  in  order  that  the 
Glad  Tidings  may  be  circulated  to  the  uttermost  places  of  the 
earth?  This  outbirth  of  the  philanthropic  and  militant  spirit,  both 
in  the  church  and  out,  is  one  of  the  principal  achievements  of 
Christ,  and  ought  to  be  dwelt  upon  more  lengthily  than  I  can 
to-day  and  now.  For  I  wish  to  hasten  and  remind  you  of  that  ever- 
increasing  expectation  of  the  golden  age  under  the  dominion  of 
Christ,  which  has  intrenched  itself  in  the  heart  of  mankind.  The 
good  and  the  bad  alike  look  forward  confidently  to  that  harvest- 
field  of  time, — that  reaping  to  which  all  our  uncounted  generations 
have  sowed.  The  seers  of  Israel  saw  it  and  wrought  hymns  in  the 
joy  of  that  foresight.  The  saints  of  Israel  saw  it  and  were  strength- 
ened. The  people  of  Israel  turned  their  faces  to  it  and  waited. 
But  the  world  at  large,  in  lack  of  those  forewarning  signs  which 
enriched  the  Hebrew  economy,  did  not  much  anticipate  the  new 
heavens  and  the  new  earth.  A  few  prescient  men,  longing  much 
and  not  wholly  shut  out  from  God's  love  and  light,  albeit  they 
bowed  to  the  divinities  of  Polytheism,  did  half  forefeel  the  distant 


588  SERMONS. 

day ;  but  they  were  scarcely  more  wise  in  the  matter  than  these 
plants  in  dungeons  are  which  go  creeping  towards  the  single  ray  of 
light  shooting  through  the  dungeon's  gloom.  They  knew  they  were 
dark,  and  that  alone  suggested  day.  But  whether  the  thing  they 
needed  would  ever  come  they  could  not  firmly  say,  and  they  could 
not  support  thereon  an  unwavering  hope.  And  their  heathen 
fellow-men,  the  less  sagacious  and  less  spiritual  multitude,  who 
rested  in  their  idolatries  and  lived  on  them  (in  so  far  as  an  immor- 
tal can  live  on  such  chips  and  chaff),  they  did  not  hope  even  so 
stoutly  as  did  these  their  leaders  and  sons  of  inspiration.  So  it  was 
substantial  night  in  all  those  pagan  lands,  and  under  the  heavy  old 
gloom  the  leaden-footed  years  went  round  and  round. 

"  But  hark  !     A  glad  voice  the  lonely  desert  cheers; 
Prepare  the  way  !    a  God,  a  God  appears  ! 

The  Saviour  comes  !  by  ancient  bards  foretold : 
Hear  him,  ye  deaf!  and  all  ye  blind,  behold  ! 
He  from  thick  films  will  purge  the  visual  ray, 
And  on  the  sightless  eye-ball  pour  the  day." 

And  so  the  blind  people  began  to  see  and  to  foresee.  Dimly 
on  their  sad  horizon  broke  the  faint  day.  And  Hope  leaped  for- 
ward to  meet  it.  And  the  trembling  dawn  faltered  on  into  firm 
morning,  until  now  all  Gentile  tribes  of  man,  who  have  heard  the 
Gospel  news  and  have  been  at  all  educated  into  its  ideas  and 
aspirations,  are  mounted  to  their  outlooks  in  watch  for  the  prom- 
ised age  of  gold.  Saint  and  sinner  they  seem  to  know  it  will  come. 
The  sinful  do  not  help  it  on  at  all,  and  they  stand  so  in  the  way  of 
it  that  God  would  need  to  clear  them  out  of  the  earth  in  order  to 
bring  it  in,  and  yet  they  seem  to  congratulate  themselves  that  such 
an  era  is  to  be.  Their  orators  speak  of  it  often  as  a  coming  not  to 
be  deplored  but  longed  for.  Their  poets  enliven  their  song  with 
it.  Their  whole  manhood  is  actually  tinged  by  it  sometimes.  You 
will  hear  them  defending  righteousness,  in  days  when  righteousness 
goes  weary  and  scarred  and  has  not  where  to  lay  her  head.  "  It 
will  not  always  be  so,"  they  say,  "the  right  will  be  uppermost 
by  and  by,  the  throne  of  God  stands,  the  march  of  the  race  is 
onward."  And  they  believe  what  they  say,  and  they  appeal  to  the 
Most  High  on  the  point,  and  their  faith  nerves  them  and  they 
stand,  like  a  rock  in  the  encircling  billows.  And  this  confidence  of 
theirs  which  makes  them  so  valiant  and  of  such  large  account  in 


SERMONS.  589 

the  manful  struggles  of  the  world,  and  so  much  a  bulwark  to  what- 
ever cause  they  pledge  their  energies,  this  admirable  confidence  of 
theirs  in  that  future  of  victory,  is  borrowed  unconsciously  from  that 
Christianity  which  they  in  practice  reject,  and  is  an  inadvertent 
testimony  to  Christ's  power  to  permeate  and  qualify  the  thinking 
even  of  those  myriads  who  are  unreconciled  to  him  and  will  never 
enter  his  kingdom  of  glory.  And  this  is  a  good  instance,  it  seems 
to  me,  of  that  which  I  have  been  trying  to  exhibit,  namely ;  that  by 
contact  with  souls  renewed,  and  by  breathing  an  atmosphere  satur- 
ated with  ideas,  doctrines  and  principles  which  these  souls  have  set 
afloat  and  by  God's  grace  keep  afloat,  the  unchristian  masses 
absorb  enough  of  the  Gospel  to  entitle  them  to  the  name  of 
Christian,  in  a  certain  superficial  and  yet  important  sense,  so  that 
among  the  historic  triumphs  of  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ  and  as  one 
of  the  most  noteworthy  results  of  his  advent,  is  to  be  reckoned  this 
quasi-dominion  over  those  who  do  not  love  him.  And  this  half 
dominion  is  no  small  cause  of  joy  to  us,  when  the  day  of  Christ's 
birth  comes  round ;  not  merely  because  it  is  in  itself  of  value,  but 
also  because  it  prepares  the  way  for  the  Church  to  multiply  her 
true  and  godly  votaries.  For  dawn  precedes  day.  The  scattered 
drops  go  before  the  shower.  The  feeblest  green  foretells  the  sum- 
mer's wide  and  gracious  bounty.  The  many  lower  creatures  that 
peopled  the  geologic  immensities  of  time,  ascending  with  infinite 
delay  from  type  to  type,  heralded  God's  perfect  form  of  man.  And 
this  universal  gradualism  prevails  also  in  the  conquests  of  the 
Christian  religion,  and  this  outlying  penumbral  influence  which  I 
have  described,  this  dissemination  of  Christly  thoughts  and  germ 
thoughts  and  laws,  and  this  partial  modification  of  the  undevout,  is 
the  natural  precursor  of  a  completer  work,  even  the  salvation  of  the 
soul. 

We  were  saying,  that  if  we  would  enter  the  fellowship  of 
Simeon's  joy,  and  in  order  thereto,  two  causes  of  effort  are  open  to 
us.  And  one  was  to  gather  the  bright  details  of  Christian  history, 
and  thus  magnify  the  Advent  and  increase  its  impression  on  our 
minds  and  hearts  by  studying  its  great  results. 

And  the  second,  which  I  shall  merely  mention,  is  to  live 
Simeon's  holy,  spiritual  life :  for  whoso  lives  in  that  true  and 
exalted  way  will  surely  find  his  apprehension  opened  to  receive  the 
Messiah,  and  out  of  that  open  apprehension  gratitude  will  grow,  and 
he  and  those  divine  souls  who  waited  for  the  consolation  of  Israel 


590  SERMONS. 

will  flow  together  in  one  blessed  feeling,  bridging  the  outstretched 
interval  between  this  and  then  and  living,  one  family,  one  life. 

And  now,  as  I  leave  this  subject,  permit  me  in  a  word  to 
remind  you  of  that  other  Advent,  still  to  occur,  when  you  and  I 
shall  be  called  up  out  of  our  graves  to  meet  the  descending  Judge. 
For  he  who  was  slain  doth  live  again. 

By  death  he  death's  dark  king  defeated, 

And  overcame  the  grave. 
Rising,  the  triumph  he  completed; 

He  lives,  he  reigns  to  save  ! 
Heaven's  happy  myriads  bow  before  him; 

He  comes,  the  Judge  of  Men. 
These  eyes  shall  see  him  and  adore  him. 

Lord  Jesus  !  own  me  then. 

"I  know  that  my  Redeemer  liveth,  and  that  he  shall  stand  at 
the  latter  day  upon  the  earth  :  And  though  after  my  skin  worms 
destroy  this  body,  yet  in  my  flesh  shall  I  see  God ;  whom  I  shall  see 
for  myself,  and  mine  eyes  shall  behold,  and  not  another ;"  cries  an 
uplifted  voice  away  back  in  the  dusk  midway  between  Adam  and 
Christ.  To  which,  out  of  the  morning  glories  of  the  better  dis- 
pensation, a  whole  happy  choir  of  answering  voices  breaks  forth, 
tears  mingling  with  their  praises  and  praises  irradiating  their  tears, 
while  they  cry  and  say  : — "Behold  the  Lamb  of  God,  which  taketh 
away  the  sin  of  the  world." 

And  now  we,  the  people  whom  prophets  saw  sitting  in  the 
shadow  of  death  and  afterwards  beamed  upon  by  a  light  such  as 
never  gilded  their  day;  we,  children  of  hope,  standing  midway 
between  Christ  and  the  Judgment,  take  up  each  one  that  olden 
jubilee  and  song  of  faith,  century  hailing  century  backward  across 
a  broad  abyss  of  years,  and  in  solemn  expectation  we  testify  each 
and  cry  : — I  know  that  my  Redeemer  liveth,  and  that  he  shall  stand 
at  the  latter  day  upon  the  earth  :  And  though  worms  destroy  this 
body,  yet  in  my  flesh  shall  I  see  God.  For  Christ  our  Lord  is 
risen  from  the  dead,  the  first  fruits  of  them  that  sleep.  Amen  and 
Amen. 


CHRIST'S  SUPREMACY  IN  THE 
HEART. 


Delivered  at  the  Park  Church,  Hartford,  March  18, 


What  think  ye  of  Christ?— Matt,  xxii,  42. 

I  have  received  a  letter  from  a  Christian  friend,  in  which  she 
makes  some  anxious  questionings,  whether  in  her  thoughts  of  heaven 
and  in  her  hope  of  being  there  some  day,  her  feeling  is  most  aroused 
by  her  expectation  that  she  shall  meet  Christ  there,  or  by  the  expec- 
tation that  she  shall  meet  there  the  children  whom  she  has  lost. 
"  Which  is  the  supreme  element  in  my  longing,"  she  queries.  "If 
Christ,  then  I  feel  safe,  but  if  my  children,  then  how  can  I  be  safe 
— for  does  not  he  demand  a  clear  ascendency  in  my  heart?" 

This  letter  led  me  into  some  reflections  which  I  will  now  put 
before  you,  though  I  will  not  confine  myself  to  the  exact  particulars 
of  her  case,  but,  rather,  spread  abroad  upon  a  general  subject. 

I  think  that  many  Christian  people  find  themselves  confused 
sometimes,  as  to  Christ's  supremacy  in  their  feeling,  and  are  there- 
by made  anxious.  When  the  heart  is  full  of  loves,  personal  and 
other — as  all  human  hearts  are — it  is  inevitable  that  the  transcend- 
ent affection  should  be  a  little  difficult  to  get  at,  ordinarily.  Take 
it  in  the  matter  of  our  love  for  human  beings,  and  how  hard  it  is  to 
decide  often.  Let  me  ask  some  deep-hearted  man  here — whom  do 
you  love  best,  your  wife  or  your  children  ?  Or,  take  the  children  by 
themselves,  which  one  of  them  do  you  love  best?  The  little  one, 
perhaps  you  would  say  at  first ;  he  is  so  helpless  and  so  innocent, 
and  so  perfectly  confiding,  and  so  infinitely  cunning  and  all  that. 
But  stop  ;  think  it  over.     That  full-grown  son  of  yours  was  all  that, 


592  SERMONS. 

and  his  entire  sweet  childhood  has  gone  into  your  heart  forever  ;  and 
if  anything  should  happen  to  him,  instantly  all  his  cradle  days  would 
come  back,  and  his  days  of  prattle  and  his  young  trust  in  you  and 
the  clinging  of  his  arms  around  your  neck.  Yes,  he  would  be  your 
little  one  again  ;  and  in  addition  to  that,  all  his  later  years  would 
pour  in  to  melt  you  down  ;  so  that  reasoning  the  whole  matter  out, 
as  coolly  as  possible,  it  seems,  after  all,  that  perhaps  you  love  him 
the  best ;  and  that  if  you  were  really  driven  to  decide  which  one  you 
would  prefer  to  lose  by  death,  you  might  say,  "let  the  little  one  go." 

But  I  imagine,  O  man,  that  by  the  time  you  had  made  your 
decision,  you  would  find  the  little  one  surging  in  on  you  in  a  way  to 
compel  you  to  re-open  the  whole  case  ;  and  there  you  would  be, 
oscillating  between  two  infinities  in  complete  helplessness.  You 
could  not  say — "  let  that  child  go — or  that — or  that — or  that."  And 
you  could  not  say — "let  my  wife  go,  rather  than  any  child  of  my 
group  of  children."  You  cannot  tell  which  you  do  love  best.  And 
even  if  in  some  extremity  you  were  called  to  choose  between  your 
child  and  another  man's  child,  and  say  which  you  would  rather  have 
given  up  to  death,  you  could  hardly  tell.  The  fact  is,  in  the  face  of 
that  other  man's  child,  you  would  see  your  own — and  the  longer  you 
looked  the  more  you  would  see  it ;  and  at  last,  the  utter  and  unut- 
terable preciousness  of  your  own  would  be  so  imputed  to  that  other, 
that  to  reject  that,  would  be  about  the  same  as  rejecting  your  own. 
And  that  would  be  true  just  in  proportion  as  you  were  a  greatly  loving 
father.  And  on  these  great  indestructible  facts,  is  founded  the 
magnificent  and  heart-melting  solidarity  of  mankind.  In  so  far  as 
a  man  is  a  lover  of  a  certain  circle,  he  tends  to  be  a  lover  of  all 
human  beings. 

Now,  I  would  not  press  this  illustration  too  far.  I  know 
whether  I  love  my  household  better  than  I  do  Nero,  eighteen  hun- 
dred years  back  there  ;  and  better  than  I  do  millions  of  people  now- 
living.  So  all  I  mean  to  imply  in  my  illustration  is,  that  in  cases 
where  we  do  intensely  love,  as  in  our  own  families,  it  is  very  easy 
to  be  confused  on  the  question,  which  one  we  most  love  ;  and  in 
like  manner,  if  I  think  of  Heaven  as  the  place  where  my  dear  chil- 
dren are,  and  the  place  also  where  my  precious  Saviour  is,  I  may  be 
rather  innocently  confused  as  to  which  of  those  two  allurements, 
both  enormous,  do  most  fill  my  ever-yearning  mind.  Both  of  those 
loves  outrun  all  measurements ;  and  of  course  if  I  cannot  meas- 
ure either,  I  cannot  tell  which  is  the  largest.     If  I  look  out  upon 


SERMONS.  593 

the  Atlantic  ocean  I  cannot  see  land  ;  if  I  look  out  upon  the  Pacific 
ocean  I  cannot  see  land  ;  how  then  can  I  tell  which  is  the  broadest  ? 
They  are  both  broadest,  to  my  shoreless  feeling  about  them. 

So  my  first  remark  is,  many  Christians  find  themselves  in  doubt, 
as  to  which  love  is  their  dominant  love,  just  as  my  friend  who  wrote 
the  letter  was ;  and  neither  of  them  is  necessarily  guilty  on 
account  of  it.  They  are  in  the  same  difficulty,  when  they  come  to 
compare  their  affections  for  human  friends,  one  with  another. 

But  some  one  will  say  to  me — "  your  illustration  breaks  down, 
because  we  ought  to  give  Christ  our  supreme  love  and  ought  to 
make  sure  that  we  do  ;  whereas  in  the  case  of  human  friends,  we  are 
not  called  to  make  any  such  discrimination,  and  get  it  definitely 
settled  that  this  or  that  person  is  the  supreme  one  to  us."  I  reply 
— all  I  am  trying  to  show  now  is  that  where  the  heart  is  profoundly 
that  is  to  say  infinitely,  engaged  in  several  directions,  it  lies  in 
the  nature  of  the  case  that  it  should  be  pretty  difficult  always,  to 
pick  out  the  supreme  love  and  absolutely  identify  it ;  so  that  if  we 
are  not  always  clear  in  regard  to  Christ,  we  may  not  be  utterly 
criminal  in  the  matter. 

But,  by  way  of  farther  explication  of  this  subject,  I  will  say  : 

Secondly,  that  confusion  as  to  our  supreme  love,  arises  in  part 
from  the  fact  that  those  feelings  in  us  which  are  most  vivacious  and 
make  the  liveliest  ado  in  our  consciousness  at  the  moment,  are  apt 
to  pass  with  us  for  more  than  they  are.  For  example,  I  am  toiling 
along  a  country  road,  when  suddenly,  a  beautiful  view  opens  before 
me  and  my  sensibilities  spring  to  their  feet,  in  what  seems  a  perfect 
delight.  If  I  took  an  inventory  of  my  emotional  contents  at  that 
instant,  I  might  say — "there  is  no  delight  anywhere  in  my  soul 
superior  to  this."  That  would  be  my  natural  utterance.  Truth 
would  seem  to  compel  me  to  say  that.  But  while  I  am  still  looking 
at  that  enchanting  outspread  of  scenery,  a  certain  friend  of  mine, 
whom  I  love  mightily,  whom  I  have  not  seen  for  long  years  and  did 
not  suppose  to  be  in  this  country,  approaches  me  from  behind  and 
calls  my  name.  Then,  where  is  my  joy  of  scenery?  And  if  some 
one  asks,  which  is  most  delightsome — that  landscape,  or  that 
beloved  face  ?  with  what  energy  I  repudiate  the  intimation  that  any 
comparison  between  them  is  possible.  The  landscape  was  supreme, 
but  a  supremer  has  arrived. 

But  while  I  am  in  the  mid-flow  of  love's  luxury  in  meeting  that 
friend,  a  messenger  arrives  with  a  telegram  which  I  open,  and  find 


594  SERMONS. 

that  a  wayward  child  of  mine,  who  ran  away  from  me  years  ago, 
sending  back  no  tidings,  for  whom  I  have  prayed  in  daily  agony, 
that  he  might  be  redeemed  and  that  I  might  see  him  once  more,  had 
wandered  into  one  of  Mr.  Moody's  meetings  in  London,  had  been 
converted  and  had  started  for  home.  Now  I  am  touched  with  a 
feeling  deeper  than  that  of  the  landscape,  and  deeper  than  that  of 
the  friend.  Oh  yes,  much  deeper.  I  thought  I  was  supremely 
happy  over  the  landscape,  but  I  was  not ;  I  thought  I  was  supremely 
happy  over  my  suddenly  appearing  friend,  but  I  was  not.  No,  a 
thousand  fathoms  down  below  all  these,  in  my  unfathomable  heart, 
was  a  yearning  which  I  had  forgotten,  and  a  moaning  and  a  perpet- 
ual cry  unto  God — and  once  touched  down  there,  there  breaks  up 
into  my  consciousness  a  flood  vaster  than  all  the  floods  of  the  sea, 
and  those  surgings  of  friendship  and  of  esthetic  sensibility  which 
seemed  the  greatest  things  possible,  a  few  moments  before,  are  found 
now  to  be  almost  mere  froth,  they  are  so  small  comparatively. 

But  now,  make  one  other  supposition — a  bold  one  but  conceiv- 
able. While  I  am  thanking  God  for  the  deliverance  of  my  child, 
and  while  all  the  years  that  I  have  been  waiting  for  it  are  resounding 
in  my  feeling,  behold  !  I  am  approached  by  One  whom  I  have  seen 
a  thousand  times  in  my  imagination,  even  by  him  who  bore  my 
child's  sins  and  mine,  and  the  whole  world's,  in  his  own  body  on 
the  tree — there  he  is — that  visage  which  was  marred  more  than  any 
man's,  those  wounded  hands,  that  wounded  side,  that  human  form, 
but  all  transfigured  in  the  glory  of  the  resurrection ;  there  he  is  and 
there  I  stand  face  to  face  with  him — the  dream  of  my  whole  life  is 
fulfilled  and  I  see  him ;  and  now  what  says  my  feeling  within  me  ? 
Do  I  shout?  Do  I  weep?  Do  I  speak?  Do  I  seem  agitated? 
Am  I  even  as  much  excited  as  I  was  when  I  first  caught  sight  of  that 
glorious  landscape  ?  No,  I  have  been  struck  now  in  the  profound- 
est  range  of  my  nature  and  I  am  calm,  unutterably  calm  ;  but  oh, 
so  joyful !  To  have  recovered  my  child  was  enough,  and  in  my 
emotion  over  that  I  should  have  said — in  that  direction  my  affec- 
tions tide  heaviest,  but  now  I  see  that  the  heaviest  of  all  movements 
in  me  is  and  was  the  Christward  movement.  It  is  not  a  noisy 
movement,  so  far  as  my  consciousness  of  it  is  concerned,  and  I 
might  easily  miss  it  from  among  my  emotions  in  ordinary  times,  but 
it  is  deep  and  real  and  the  dearest  thing  I  know.  Some  rush  of 
business  might  make  me  forget  it,  or  some  petty,  passing  anxiety. 
My  daily  newspaper  might.     A  flush  of  humor  might.     The  whistle 


SERMONS.  595 

of  a  locomotive  might,  or  a  gathering  storm,  or  a  flight  of  birds  in 
the  air,  or  the  chirp  of  a  cricket  in  my  house,  or  the  robin-song  in 
the  tree.  I  am  in  a  world  full  of  sights  and  sounds  and  surprises, 
and  I  am  a  creature  of  sense  constitutionally,  and  these  forty  thou- 
sand small  things  get  into  the  foreground  of  my  life  and  I  seem 
mortgaged  to  the  trivial ;  but  one  vision  of  him  who  has  redeemed 
me  and  the  whole  fallen  creation,  (such  a  vision  as  I  shall  surely 
have  out  somewhere  beyond  death) ,  will  dispel  instantly  and  utterly 
these  many  lesser  engagements,  and  I  shall  settle  to  my  true  pole- 
star  unconfusedly  and  forever. 

My  third  remark,  suggested  to  me  by  my  friend's  letter,  runs 
on  this  wise  : — some  pious  people  do  not  gather  their  pious  experi- 
ences about  the  personal  Christ  as  distinctly  as  some  of  the  rest  of 
us  do — for  one  reason  or  another  they  do  not ;  and  therefore  in 
their  thoughts  of  heaven,  I  should  rather  expect  they  would  often 
question,  whether  their  anticipated  meeting  with  Christ  there  is  so 
delightful  as  their  anticipated  meeting  with  children  and  others  in 
that  country.  It  seems  strange  that  the  religion  of  religious  people 
in  Christendom  should  ever  fail  to  be  full  of  the  personal  Christ, 
distinctly  conceived  and  much  communed  with.  Christ  came  into 
the  world  for  two  purposes  ;  to  lay  a  basis  of  forgiveness  for  sinners, 
and  to  present  God  to  the  mind  of  man  with  unprecedented  clear- 
ness and  persuasion,  the  implication  being  that  the  old-time  presen- 
tation of  God  was  not  sufficient  to  make  men  know  him  and  draw 
near  unto  him  in  confidence  and  affection.  If  they  would  have 
known  him  and  would  have  drawn  near,  that  would  have  been 
enough.  That  is  salvation  always.'  And  in  so  far  as  any  particular 
persons  can  do  that  without  Christ,  as  known  and  distinctly  con- 
ceived by  them,  they  are  at  liberty  to  do  it.  The  Patriarchs  did  it. 
The  Prophets  did  it.  A  scattered  few  at  least  in  heathendom  have 
done  it.  And  in  Christian  lands,  I  say,  some  find  their  way  to  God 
and  are  on  terms  of  acceptance  with  God  and  are  in  God's  service, 
without  any  such  full  and  habitual  concentration  on  God's  Son  as 
they  might  have.  They  confess  him  as  their  Saviour,  they  accept  all 
that  the  creed  says  about  him,  they  join  with  others  in  magnifying 
him  ;  but  while  multitudes  clearly  see  him  and  commune  with  him, 
and  speak  with  him  in  prayer,  and  refer  their  questions  to  him,  and 
cast  their  cares  and  griefs  upon  him,  and  take  him  for  their  actual 
bosom  friend  and  nearest  intimate,  as  really  and  as  delightedly  as 
though  he  were  here  bodily,  these  others  think  of  him  much  more 


596  SERMONS. 

vaguely ;  do  not  get  him  before  their  mind's  eye,  do  not  fasten  upon 
his  personal  form  as  it  appeared  on  the  earth  and  as  it  now  is  in 
glory ;  and  therefore  of  course  do  not  make  their  whole  heaven, 
as  they  anticipate  it,  to  circle  about  him  with  absolute  distinctness, 
and  in  him  converge  and  merge  all  its  many  elements. 

I  do  not  think  we  can  deny  the  reality  of  the  religion  of  such 
people;  (they  put  forth  too  many  strong  signs  for  that),  but  I 
consider  it  unfortunate  for  them  that  they  do  not  follow  the  more 
personal  way  of  experience  as  just  now  described  ;  and  when  piety 
is  stated  in  the  New  Testament  fashion,  as  supreme  love  and 
loyalty  to  the  personal  Lord  Jesus,  I  should  certainly  look  to  see 
them  very  doubtful  very  often,  whether  or  not  they  are  Christians. 
And  when  heaven  is  represented  in  the  Scriptures,  as  made  up 
mainly  of  the  glorious  presence  of  Jesus,  the  Saviour,  I  should 
expect  them  to  wonder  whether  they  are  supremely  drawn  to  it 
under  that  view,  and  are  not  rather  most  drawn  by  certain  reunions 
— human  reunions — which  they  are  to  enjoy  there. 

I  have  one  other  suggestion  to  make ;  a  final  suggestion.  It 
so  happens  in  the  case  of  many  of  us,  that  we  have  not  any  children  in 
Paradise,  they  are  all  with  us  ;  neither  have  we  there  any  other 
person  whom  we  long  to  meet  every  day  of  our  lives,  with  a  longing 
that  can  hardly  be  appeased  ;  so  that  if  our  blessed  Lord  is  really 
dear  to  us,  he  has  no  competitor  over  there  in  that  country  to  con- 
fuse us  and  throw  us  into  wondering  whether  he  is  the  one  whom 
we  most  want  to  meet.  With  mothers  who  have  children  there,  it 
is  different.  The  mother-feeling  is  the  strongest  natural  feeling  there 
is.  The  father- feeling  comes  nearest  to  it,  but  taking  fathers  as  they 
average,  they  do  not  come  very  near  to  it.  Once  in  a  while  you 
will  see  a  man  most  bountiful  in  his  emotions  and  most  tender,  to 
whom  his  children  go  in  a  way  as  nestling  and  intimate  as  to  their 
mother,  and  when  a  man  thus  molded  is  also  thoroughly  strong  and 
perhaps  massive  in  his  build,  I  do  not  know  anything  under  the  sun 
more  touching  and  beautiful.  *  But  you  do  not  very  often  find 
instances  just  like  that.  No,  it  is  the  mothers  that  do  the  loving. 
They  are  related  to  the  children  in  a  mysterious  intimacy — that,  to 
begin  with.  Bone  of  their  bone  and  flesh  of  their  flesh,  the  children 
are, — an  intimacy  that  has  no  parallel  in  nature,  an  intimacy  to  be 
sure  that  is  not  kept  up  in  its  literality ;  and  yet  after  the  two  lives 
are  separated  and  the  child  starts  out  on  its  individual  career,  that 
first  absolute  unity  of  life  seems  somehow  to  shed  an  indestructible 


SERMONS.  597 

warmth  through  the  mother-mind  and  bind  her  to  her  offspring  in 
eternal  bonds.  Then  next,  it  is  the  mother's  arms,  mainly,  into 
which  the  children  are  born.  She  enfolds  them,  she  warms  and 
nourishes  them,  from  her  overhanging  face  of  love  they  receive  their 
first  communications,  from  her  hand  their  first  soothing,  from  her 
voice  their  first  cheer,  from  her  lips  their  first  religion,  at  her  knee 
their  first  prayer,  from  her  watchfulness  their  first  defence  ;  and  if 
we  pass  beyond  these  first  things  and  move  along  the  years  of 
expanding  childhood,  while  the  father  has  his  function  more  and 
more  in  certain  ways,  yet  it  is  never  quite  possible  to  unseat  the 
mother  from  her  ascendency  and  original  queenship  ;  and  when  old 
men  in  the  mind-wandering  of  death  begin  to  call  beloved  names, 
always  you  will  notice  it  is  their  mother  they  call  rather  than  their 
father.  And  for  one,  I,  a  man,  am  not  jealous  of  this  preference. 
It  has  been  earned.  By  the  ordination  of  nature  it  has  been  made 
her  privilege  to  earn  it,  in  travails  manifold  and  unutterable  ;  yes, 
in  unprecedented  outlays  of  both  soul  and  body.  •  But,  having  thus 
entered  herself  into  love's  depths  and  made  herself  her  children's 
dear  nest,  it  comes  inevitably  that  her  loneliness  and  her  longing  and 
her  agony  shall  also  be  transcending,  when  those  same  children  are 
plucked  away  and  carried  beyond  sight  and  given  over  to  some 
strange,  new  mothering  out  somewhere.  She  misses  them  from  her 
arms,  she  misses  them  in  her  plannings,  she  misses  them  at  even- 
tide, she  longs  for  them  in  her  night  wakings,  she  hears  their  voices 
in  the  voices  of  other  children,  she  remembers  them  in  the  house- 
hold anniversaries,  she  sees  their  picture  on  the  wall,  they  run 
through  all  her  life  like  a  refrain  ■  and  then,  when  her  thoughts  go 
out  towards  Paradise  and  the  millions  of  millions  therein,  she  can- 
not much  pause  on  the  many  of  whom  she  has  only  heard,  however 
great  their  renown  may  be  and  however  resplendent  their  saintship  ; 
but  past  them  all  she  flies  to  find  and  fondle  her  own,  to  ask  from 
them  innumerable  explanations,  to  note  what  changes  have  come 
over  them,  to  listen  for  the  old  tones,  to  hear  them  call  her 
mother,  to  feel  their  heart-beat,  to  luxuriate  in  the  old  warmth — 
and  in  the  midst  of  it  all,  is  it  wonderful  that  she  feels  something 
as  I  did  when  that  telegram  came  announcing  that  my  child 
was  redeemed  and  was  homeward  bound ;  feels  that  is,  that  her 
children  are  her  one  cup  of  joy,  that  she  wants  nothing  but  them, 
that  Paradise  is  not  much  but  meeting  them,  that  the  surrounding 
other   hosts  there  are   well   enough,  but  are  not   they ;  and  that 


598  SERMONS. 

even  a  vision  of  Christ  could  scarcely  surpass  her  reunion  with 
them. 

Worry  not,  O  mother.  Wait  till  you  see  Him  !  Wait  till  it 
comes  to  you  that  that  dear  Paradise  was  purchased  by  him,  that 
your  children  are  there  as  borne  there  by  his  commissioned  angels, 
that  you  yourself  are  there,  a  ransomed  sinner  redeemed  by  his 
blood ;  that  the  encompassing  multitudes  white-robed  are  the  tro- 
phies of  his  grace,  that  the  eternal  song  they  sing  was  put  upon  their 
lips  by  him,  and  that  if  the  future  of  them  and  of  you  and  your  chil- 
dren is  to  unfold  blissfully  forever,  it  is  by  his  adorable  mediator- 
ship  that'so  it  is — wait,  I  say,  till  these  undeniable  realities  get  their 
full  stroke  upon  you,  and  notice  then  the  vibration  of  the  great  major 
chords  of  your  being.  You  admire  the  flowers  with  their  lovely 
coloring,  and  the  variegated  plumage  of  birds,  and  the  forest's  diversi- 
fied green,  and  the  flash  of  the  diamond,  and  the  sparkle  of  the 
illumined  sea,  and  the  many  glories  of  the  ever-varying  firmament ; 
but  these  all  are  only  the  Sun,  in  its  innumerable  reflections,  and 
knowing  that,  as  you  do  perfectly,  it  would  be  curiously  inconsider- 
ate and  illogical  in  you  to  take  no  interest  at  all  in  the  Sun.  These 
many  illumined  surfaces  fascinate  you,  and  while  under  their  fasci- 
nation you  naturally  do  not  think  of  the  Sun,  but  when  your  atten- 
tion is  called  to  it  you  cannot  help  thinking  of  him  and  making 
much  of  him.  And  those  multiplied  surfaces  far  and  wide,  are 
given  you  in  order  that  you  may  the  more  completely  know  and 
admire  that  great  luminary  which  produces  them  all.  What  must 
that  orb  be  which  can  thus  bespangle  and  glorify  the  entire  visible 
creation — and  in  fact  make  it  visible. 

Well,  you  see  the  application  of  my  parable.  All  souls  saved 
and  imparadised ;  be  they  your  children,  O  mother,  or  yourself,  or 
whoever  they  may  be,  are  the  glorious  Redeemer  in  his  distributed 
effulgence  ;  all  their  shining  is  He  shining.  While  you  are  looking 
at  them  and  are  full  of  love  for  them,  it  is  easy  to  think  only  of  them 
and  I  do  not  know  that  the  Lord  Jesus  will  be  severe  with  you  if 
you  do ;  but  these  reflections  of  him  should  serve  to  make  him  the 
more  known  to  you  and  the  more  adorable.  What  must  that  One 
be  who  can  produce  all  this.  And  if  you  are  a  true  Christian,  you 
will  be  likely  to  think  of  that  sometimes.  And  if  Paradise  seems 
sweet  to  you,  with  its  meetings,  the  author  of  the  Paradise  and  the 
meetings  will  seem  sweet  to  you,  and  it  would  be  illogical  in  you  to 
the  last  degree  if  he  did  not.     It  occurs  to  you  occasionally,  that 


SERMONS.  599 

your  departed  friends  are  the  main  element  in  the  heaven  you  hope 
for,  perhaps.  Well,  perhaps  they  are,  but  the  fact  that  you  have 
that  surmise  does  not  prove  it — any  more  than  my  delight  in  the 
landscape  which  I  mentioned,  proved  that  that  was  the  greatest 
delight  of  my  soul ;  or  than  my  joy  over  my  friend  returned,  proved 
that  the  greatest  thing  in  me  ;  or  than  my  ecstasy  of  tears  and  smiles 
when  that  telegram  came,  proved  that  the  greatest.  We  know  not 
what  is  greatest  with  us  until  the  greatest  things  are  actually  pre- 
sented. Half  the  time  in  this  life  of  ours,  Jesus  is  not  consciously 
before  us,  and  cannot  be.  But  sometimes  he  is ;  and  those  are 
the  times  that  test  us.  He  is  put  before  us  in  sermons  now  and 
then,  fairly  and  squarely.  He  is  put  before  us  in  calls  to  action  for 
him.  He  is  put  before  us  in  calls  to  self-denials  for  his  glory.  Also 
in  noble  human  examples.  Also  in  great  emergencies  we  are  made 
to  be  very  serious  and  to  feel  about  for  our  spiritual  supports,  and 
then  we  think  of  him. 

But  the  most  wonderful  of  all  test  hours  will  be  when  we  meet 
him  beyond  this  life.  The  confusing  noises  of  earth  will  have  passed 
back  into  the  infinite  distance  then,  and  we  shall  have  the  full  use  of 
our  faculties.  The  immense  strain  on  our  attention  of  this  world's 
duties  will  have  then  been  taken  away,  and  we  shall  gaze  upon  him, 
unembarrassed  by  any  distraction.  The  precious  affections,  too, 
which  now  bewilder  us  by  their  lovely  urgency  will  settle  into  the 
background,  when  that  form  divine  appears  ;  and  our  soul  within  us 
will  stand  forth  in  absolute  attention  to  that  vision.  Then,  O  mother, 
if  you  falter  and  betake  yourself  to  your  children,  it  is  even  as  you 
feared  and  you  are  not  a  Christian.  But  many  now  fearful,  will  not 
falter.  As  the  ocean  lifts  to  the  full  moon,  as  planets  move  down 
ever  to  their  central  sun,  as  great  nations  rally  to  their  hero,  as  lovers 
flow  to  their  mates  in  gravitations  irresistible,  so  will  they,  the  hither- 
to fearful  and  faltering  ones,  confess  him  as  the  fairest  among  ten 
thousand  and  the  one  altogether  lovely.  Often  the  magnetic  needle 
trembles  and  blunders  and  gropes  and  knows  not  where  to  find  the 
pole.  There  is  iron  about  somewhere  that  confuses  it.  So  in  this 
life  we  tremble  and  are  confused.  There  are  disturbing  forces  on 
every  hand.  But  as  the  needle  still  seeks  for  the  north  and,  when 
this  and  that  are  withdrawn,  finds  it  and  there  rests,  so  we  at  last 
surely  find  our  hearts'  true  treasure,  our  Redeemer  and  our  All ;  and 
there  rest  forever. 

God  hasten  the  day. 


JESUS  WEEPING  OVER 
JERUSALEM 

FOUR    DAYS    BEFORE    HIS    CRUCIFIXION 


Delivered  at  the  Park  Church,  Hartford,  April  3,  1887. 


The  religious  system  of  the  Jews  centred  in  the  temple  at 
Jerusalem,  and  thither  all  Jews  were  compelled  to  come  at  stated 
times  year  after  year,  and  go  through  certain  ceremonies.  But  of 
these  universal  upcomings  to  that  capital  city  of  their  religion,  there 
was  no  one  equal  to  that  great  Spring  Festival,  the  Passover.  That 
it  was  that  commemorated  the  miraculous  deliverance  of  their 
nation  from  its  four  hundred  years  of  bondage  in  Egypt,  and  the 
people  swarmed  to  it  with  a  special  delight.  It  was  a  man's-festival 
to  be  sure,  in  that  only  the  males  of  Israel,  beginning  at  twelve  years 
of  age,  were  required  by  the  law  of  God  to  attend  it ;  nevertheless, 
women  and  children  came  in  great  numbers,  for  the  sake  of  the 
outing,  the  excursion,  the  multitudes  they  could  see,  the  personal 
friends  they  might  meet,  the  religious  ceremonies  they  might  wit- 
ness and  the  general  air  of  jubilation.  The  result  was,  that  millions 
at  once  came  together  to  keep  this  great  anniversary.  They  filled  all 
habitable  places  in  the  city  ;  and  then  in  all  the  country  immediately 
around  about,  they  put  up  temporary  booths  of  branches  of  the 
trees  and  what  not,  and  thronged  them.  At  these  annual  gatherings, 
they  renewed  their  friendships,  they  did  some  trading,  they  revived 
their  patriotism,  they  unified  and  consolidated  the  national  life.  It 
was  a  very  great  time,  as  you  can  see  in  a  moment.  Our  yearly 
Passion  week  and  Easter  corresponds  to  the  time  of  their  Passover ; 
and  millions  more  keep  these  anniversaries  than  kept  that  one  of 


SERMONS.  601 

theirs,  but  we  hallow  the  season  in  scattered  assemblies  all  round  the 
globe,  while  they  kept  it  in  one  national  mass-meeting.  Those  of 
us  who  bethink  ourselves  when  Easter  comes  and  are  withal  imagi- 
native, so  that  we  can  see  the  absent  as  though  present,  do  realize 
these  far-scattered  millions  of  the  world  who  join  us  in  the  Easier 
joy,  and  yet  even  our  realization  of  this  vast  community  of  holy 
feeling  is  much  more  indistinct  than  the  Jew's  realization  of  the 
Passover  hosts  and  the  Passover  delights.  He  literally  saw  his 
millions.  They  were  assembled  before  him.  At  every  step  in  the 
Holy  City  he  met  their  crowds.  On  every  height  that  encompassed 
it,  his  eye  caught  their  innumerable  green  tabernacles.  Yes,  the 
whole  Israelitish  world  were  there,  visible  and  audible  and  full  of  the 
contagion  of  the  scene  and  the  occasion. 

Well,  it  was  at  the  Passover  that  Jesus  was  crucified,  as  I  said. 
The  whole  land  had  heard  of  him ;  and  the  Passover  hosts,  when 
they  arrived  in  the  city  that  year,  from  the  North,  South,  East  and 
West,  began  to  inquire  whether  he  was  there.  They  wanted  to  see 
this  wonderful  man.  They  wanted  to  hear  him  speak  and  get  a 
sense  of  him.  Many  of  them  had  never  met  him  at  all — they  had 
simply  caught  the  rumors  about  him.  Many  of  them  had  met  him 
but  a  little  and  wished  more  of  him.  Many  of  them  had  seen  him 
considerably  and  therefore  now  longed  for  him.  He  was  not  there 
at  first,  but  he  came.  He  came  up  from  Jericho  on  the  east,  over 
the  Mount  of  Olives,  down  through  the  deep  valley  of  Kedron  and 
entered  the  city.  Then  many  things  occurred ;  yes,  those  last  few 
days  of  his  life  were  full  of  interest.  They  were  felt  to  be  very 
interesting  at  the  time,  but  oh,  how  unutterably  interesting  are  they 
to  us,  who  understand  those  days  as  no  man  there  and  then  could  ! 

I  am  not  intending  this  morning  to  recount  those  last  events, 
but  only  to  mention  one  of  them,  and  to  that  end  I  have  put 
the  Passover  occasion  before  you  a  little.  To  the  same  end  also,  I 
would  like  to  picture  to  you  the  geography  of  that  region  at  certain 
points. 

I  will  suppose  that  where  our  Connecticut  river  runs  here  on 
the  east,  is  a  great  valley  hundreds  of  feet  deep,  and  that  on  the 
west  of  the  city,  bounding  it,  is  another  similar  valley,  and  that  these 
valleys  move  along  southward  and  finally  come  together  and  head  off 
the  city  on  the  south.  There  stands  Hartford  on  a  high  triangular 
plateau,  circumscribed  on  the  east,  west  and  south,  by  these  yawn- 
ing valleys ;  while  on  the  north  it  stretches  away  into  the  country 
39 


602  SERMONS. 

with  no  break.  Now  that  gives  you  the  topography  of  Jerusalem. 
At  the  bottom  of  that  eastern  valley  is  the  garden  Gethsemane. 
Beyond  the  valley  and  bounding  it  lifts  Mount  Olivet,  some  five  to 
six  hundred  feet  above  the  valley  and  overlooking  the  city.  If  you 
ascend  the  slope  of  Olivet,  pass  over  the  summit  and  begin  to 
descend  on  the  eastern  slope,  pretty  soon  you  come  to  Bethany, 
that  famous  village  where  dwelt  Mary  and  Martha  and  Lazarus,  and 
where  Jesus  often  visited,  and  where  he  spent  his  nights  during  that 
last  Passover.  All  the  day  long  he  moved  among  the  city  crowds, 
doing  what  he  could,  answering  their  inquiries,  opening  to  them 
such  things  as  they  could  receive  and  some  things  that  they  could 
not  receive,  giving  out  mysterious  intimations  of  tragic  events  close 
at  hand  ;  making  his  disciples  pretty  anxious  sometimes,  he  was  so 
full  of  premonitions ;  encountering  now  and  then  a  grumbler  and 
hater  and  dealing  with  him ;  not  shunning  the  places  where  the 
multitude  did  most  congregate,  but  pushing  in  among  them  with  his 
strange,  sweet  speech ;  sometimes  permitting  a  mighty  concourse  to 
mass  about  him  and  listen  and  get  excited,  and  then  slipping  away 
from  them  and  escaping  an  uproar — each  day,  I  repeat,  of  that  last 
Passover  period,  he  spent  in  things  like  these,  and  then  at  night-fall, 
jaded  and  perhaps  pensive,  he,  accompanied  by  one  or  more  of  his 
Apostles,  moved  off  through  Kedron,  up  Olivet,  among  the  count- 
less Passover  booths,  on  and  on,  to  the  retirement  and  the  love  and 
the  quiet  country  sleep  of  the  dear  village.  Precious  days  !  Precious 
nights  !     Precious  glimpses  of  the  Son  of  man  ! 

At  last  the  final  Sabbath  of  his  life  arrived,  the  day  of  the  week 
corresponding  to  our  Saturday.  The  Friday  following  he  would  die. 
No  one  save  him  knew  the  exact  day.  In  fact,  no  one  knew 
he  was  to  die.  He  had  spoken  of  it  repeatedly — not  naming  the 
day  at  all — but  the  speaking  took  no  definite  hold.  It  troubled  some 
of  them  that  he  should  talk  so,  but  it  did  not  enter  their  minds  as  a 
real  thing  ;  and  so  when  it  actually  came,  they  were  just  stunned  and 
helpless.  But  the  last  Sabbath  had  dawned  and  he  spent  all  its 
hours  in  peaceful  Bethany.  The  last  evening  of  the  week,  namely  on 
Friday,  he  had  traveled  out  there  as  usual  and  there  he  was.  And 
there  he  staid — with  his  disciples,  with  the  much-loved  household 
who  had  so  often  entertained  him,  with  his  own  thoughts,  with  the 
seclusion  and  silence  of  nature,  in  much  prayer  no  doubt,  and  in 
many  little  turns,  asides  and  quiet  tokens,  of  which  we  have  not 
been  told,  but  which  we  can  easily  imagine.     Those  about  him,  I 


SERMONS.  603 

say,  did  not  know  what  was  in  the  immediate  future  ;  and  yet  such 
a  person  as  Mary  must  have  felt  a  certain  persuasive  something  in 
his  mood  and  air  that  day — something  that  drew  her  to  him  and 
made  her  to  be  still  as  she  sat  at  his  feet.  There  is  nothing  more 
mysterious  than  these  voiceless  communings  with  those  whom  we 
love.  We  read  their  hearts,  we  note  the  flow  of  their  thoughts, 
though  they  speak  not.  We  follow  them  about,  we  do  this  and  we 
do  that,  we  gently  adjust  ourselves  to  their  state  of  feeling,  we 
minister  to  them,  we  give  them  our  deep  companionship  and  they 
receive  it ;  and  yet  continually  all  is  still.  I  do  not  know  but  this 
is  a  sign  unto  us  of  the  manner  of  intercourse  in  the  other  life 
whither  we  go.  I  can  think  of  nothing  sweeter, — perfect  love  and 
perfect  mutual  understanding  and  no  words  needed,  while  our  souls 
move  on  together  through  their  appointed  and  ever-changing  moods 
and  fluctuations. 

Thus  ran  that  day  of  days  in  Bethany,  so  far  as  such  deeply 
perceiving  persons  as  Mary  and  the  Master  were  concerned. 

But,  before  the  day  was  over,  there  began  to  be  arrivals  from 
Jerusalem  ;  and  finally  these  arrivals  amounted  to  a  large  company. 
They  had  missed  Jesus  and  had  tracked  him.  The  days  previous 
had  greatly  increased  their  curiosity  in  respect  to  him,  and  in  many 
of  them  it  is  easy  to  believe  there  was  something  more  than  curiosity. 
Moreover,  they  had  all  heard  of  the  wonderful  raising  of  Lazarus 
from  the  dead,  out  in  that  mountain  village  ;  and  they  would  like  to 
see  him  and  his  sisters,  and  the  house  and  the  place  all  about,  and 
hear  them  tell  of  the  event  perhaps.  Human  nature  is  the  same  the 
world  round.  At  any  rate  they  were  there.  When  people  had  left 
their  homes  all  over  the  land  of  Israel,  as  they  had,  and  had  made, 
many  of  them  a  long  journey,  to  get  to  Jerusalem,  and  there  had 
camped  down  almost  hap-hazard  and  were  living  in  an  irregular 
fashion,  and  were  roaming  a  good  deal  from  tent  to  tent  to  look  up 
their  acquaintances  and  friends,  naturally  they  had  arrived  at  a  state 
of  mind  that  made  them  particularly  impressible  to  anything  that 
might  happen  along.  They  were  agog,  they  followed  the  last 
wonder,  they  had  not  much  else  to  do.  They  were  good  material 
for  a  mob,  as  was  often  found.  And  a  swarming  excursion  out  to 
Bethany  was  one  of  the  most  natural  things  in  the  world.  And 
there  they  were. 

But  the  night  of  the  Sabbath  passed  and  the  morning  of  the  first 
day  of  the  week  came  on,  and  Jesus  started  for  the  city  once  more  ; 


604  SERMONS. 

attended  of  course  by  his  disciples  and  his  company.  They  did  not 
go  straight  over  the  mountain  to  Jerusalem,  but  they  took  a  more 
circuitous  path  around  the  southern  slope  of  Olivet.  At  a  certain 
point,  the  road  which  winds  southward  and  westward  turns  north- 
ward, towards  Jerusalem  now  on  the  north  ;  and  presently  the 
great  and  glorious  city  suddenly  emerges.  But  before  Jesus  had 
reached  that  point  of  vision,  he  was  met  by  an  excited  multitude  on 
their  way  out  from  the  city  in  search  of  him  ;  and  those  two  crowds, 
the  crowd  ingoing  and  the  crowd  outgoing,  met  and  mingled  around 
his  person,  and  there  were  great  shoutings  and  a  strewing  of  green 
branches  and  garments  in  the  way,  for  Jesus  to  ride  upon ;  and  a 
considerable  amount  of  unconscious  fulfillment  of  ancient  prophe- 
cies concerning  the  Messiah,  was  accomplished  right  there,  we  are 
told,  and  you  would  think  that  a  King  was  on  his  way  in  a  triumphal 
procession  to  his  capital.  These  people  had  a  great  feeling  about 
this  man,  that  they  did  not  themselves  understand.  Of  course  the 
whole  nation  were  in  a  constant  lookout  for  the  coming  of  Messiah 
to  take  the  throne  of  David,  and  from  Jerusalem  give  law  to  the 
world ;  and  it  was  borne  in  upon  the  minds  of  this  tumultuous  host 
on  Olivet,  that  Jesus  was  that  Messiah,  and  that  he  might  ascend  his 
throne  at  this  very  Passover.  And  mingled  with  this  earthly  concep- 
tion were  dim  other  conceptions ;  no  doubt,  in  the  minds  of  some 
other  and  higher,  even  a  spiritual  conception.  It  is  hard  to  say 
exactly  how  they  all  felt,  but  they  were  in  a  ferment  and  woke  up 
the  whole  mountain  with  their  Hosannas.  Particularly  at  that  spot 
on  the  road  where  they  first  caught  sight  of  the  city,  did  they  huz- 
za. It  was  a  magnificent  city  in  those  days.  It  stood  well  and 
showy  on  its  high  promontory.  It  shone  well  in  that  morning's  sun. 
It  appealed  grandly  to  the  patriotic  and  passover  feeling  of  that 
great  caravan  on  the  hill  there.  Travelers  who  go  over  that  path 
to-day,  tell  us  that  the  sudden  sight  of  Jerusalem  at  that  point  is 
very  impressive,  notwithstanding  that  the  old,  imperial  city  is  gone, 
and  only  a  poor  mockery  of  her  remains. 

But  while  the  people  shouted,  and  Jesus,  being  appealed  to  by 
some  unhappy  Pharisee  to  hush  their  noise,  refused  to  do  it,  saying  : 
"  If  these  should  hold  their  peace  the  very  stones  would  cry  out." 
Behold,  he  himself  was  weeping.     And  why  was  that  ? 

I  reply,  first  of  all,  that  when  a  man  is  full  of  sensibility  he  is 
like  a  full  vessel ;  the  least  jar  of  any  sort  makes  him  overflow. 
Have  not  we  ourselves  had  days  when  things  most  trivial  would 


SERMONS.  605 

make  us  weep  ?  They  were  not  necessarily  sorrowful  things  ;  unsor- 
rowful  things  would  do  it,  just  as  soon.  And  Jesus  must  have  been 
full  of  feeling  on  that  morning's  march  ;  and  when  the  city  struck 
his  eye,  unexpectedly  very  likely,  he  could  restrain  himself  no 
longer.  I  do  not  say  that  that  fully  explains  his  tears,  but  it  is  the 
first  step  in  the  explanation.  He  was  by  nature  a  man  of  profound 
emotions,  and  under  the  circumstances  where  he  now  found  himself, 
he  was  particularly  emotional. 

Let  us  look  into  those  circumstances  wherein  he  was,  a  little. 
I  will  not  dwell  upon  them  much,  but  I  will  run  them  over.  I  love 
to  do  it. 

It  was  something  that  a  man  who  had  endured  as  much  dis- 
favor as  he  had  should  find  himself  now  suddenly  encompassed  by 
such  a  resounding  acclamation  of  friendship.  Of  course  he  knew 
that  there  was  some  dross  in  it,  and  that  he  could  not  depend  on  it 
through  all  things  and  forever.  I  do  not  mean  that  there  were  any 
hypocrites  among  those  shouters,  but  only  that  the  shouters  had  not 
gauged  the  whole  situation,  did  not  fully  know  Jesus  and  had  no 
idea  of  the  great  trial  close  at  hand  and  how  poorly  they  would  bear 
it.  However  they  were  sincere,  and  their  enthusiasm  must  have 
been  sweet  to  him. 

It  also  represented  to  him,  very  likely,  that  great  coming  time 
when  he  should  be  hailed  as  the  Messiah  by  the  united  world, 
redeemed  by  his  blood.  The  first  drops  of  a  shower  are  much  more 
than  so  many  drops — they  have  in  them,  to  our  feeling,  something 
of  the  refreshment  of  the  whole  shower  which  is  to  follow. 

In  the  next  place,  it  was  especially  easy  for  him  to  weep,  be- 
cause he  knew  that  his  affairs  were  nearing  their  great  crisis.  He 
was  not  afraid,  but  he  was  sensitive.  In  four  days,  his  task  as 
Redeemer  would  settle  upon  him  with  more  than  the  weight  of 
worlds.  A  General  Grant  may  stand  front  to  front  with  death,  and  the 
situation  is  a  very  solemn  one,  but  Grant  knows  that  his  dying  is  to  be 
for  himself  only  and  not  for  the  sins  of  the  whole  world.  Jesus  carried 
us  all.  He  knew  it.  He  foresaw  it.  He  felt  it.  If  in  Gethsemane 
he  prayed  God  to  be  released  from  it,  it  is  probable  that  as  he  con- 
templated it  four  days  away,  it  filled  him  with  a  special  sensibility. 

Again,  as  he  was  tenderly  human  and  affectionate,  it  must  have 
pressed  upon  his  feeling  that  he  was  soon  to  be  separated,  practi- 
cally forever,  from  the  familiar  scenes  and  persons  of  his  life-time. 
There  were  Bethany  and  the  circle  of  people  there  resident.     Here 


606  SERMONS. 

was  the  oft-trodden  Mount  of  Olives,  associated  with  some  of  the 
great  experiences  of  his  life.  Yonder  was  the  dear  city.  Away  to 
the  north  was  his  native  Nazareth  and  Galilee  where  he  had  labored. 
He  was  nearly  done  with  all  these.  And  with  the  Apostles  who  had 
followed  him  about  and  were  still  with  him  this  very  morning,  he 
was  nearly  done.  To  be  sure  he  would  see  them  again  when  he 
rose  from  the  dead,  but  only  transiently.  And  he  would  see  Beth- 
any again,  for  from  just  about  there,  he  would  ascend  into  heaven 
at  last ;  but  Bethany  as  a  visiting-place  and  a  tarrying-place  and  a 
place  of  love,  repose  and  refreshment,  he  could  not  know  any  more. 
Possibly  thoughts  like  these  did  not  enter  his  mind  consciously  and 
distinctly  as  he  rode  towards  the  city,  but  they  most  likely  toned 
his  feeling  and  made  it  deep,  all  the  same ;  for  have  not  we  fre- 
quently noticed  in  ourselves,  shades  of  emotion  and  even  strong 
emotions,  that  we  could  not  trace  to  any  thoughts  of  which  we  were 
at  the  moment,  aware? 

.But  there  was  one  cause  of  his  tears  which  is  expressly  men- 
tioned in  the  sacred  narrative,  thus — "  He  beheld  the  city,  and  wept 
over  it,  saying,  If  thou  hadst  known,  even  thou,  at  least  in  this  thy 
day,  the  things  which  belong  unto  thy  peace  !  but  now  they  are  hid 
from  thine  eyes.  For  the  days  shall  come  upon  thee,  that  thine 
enemies  shall  cast  a  trench  about  thee,  and  compass  thee  round,  and 
keep  thee  in  on  every  side,  and  shall  lay  thee  even  with  the  ground, 
and  thy  children  within  thee  ;  and  they  shall  not  leave  in  thee  one 
stone  upon  another ;  because  thou  knewest  not  the  time  of  thy  visi- 
tation." 

In  this  passage  of  sympathy  and  lamentation,  there  are  two 
feelings ;  the  feeling  of  a  patriot  who  foresees  the  desolation  of  his 
country,  and  the  feeling  of  one  who  had  been  sent  to  redeem 
Israel  from  her  sins  and  all  the  calamities  thereof,  but  had  been 
rejected. 

First,  Jesus  the  lover  of  his  country.  Why  should  he  not  love 
it?  He  had  spent  all  his  days  in  it  and  had  never  seen  any  other 
country.  All  his  experiences  were  associated  with  it.  It  was  the 
land  of  his  mother  and  his  brethren ;  and  all  the  generations  of  his 
kindred  were  buried  there.  He  had  received  the  impress  of  her 
institutions.  He  had  been  reared  in  her  religion  and  had  loved  it. 
From  the  day  he  was  twelve  years  old,  he  had  come  up  regularly 
with  the  pilgrim  bands  to  yonder  city  on  the  hill  and  yonder  Mount 
Zion,  the  glory  of  all  the  earth,  to  keep  holy  days  according  to  the 


SERMONS.  607 

traditions  of  Israel,  and  all  the  pious  culture  he  had  ever  had  was 
from  the  great  Israelitish  cultus  there  centred. 

Moreover,  this  land  was  a  beautiful  land  to  look  upon,  a  land 
of  hills,  valleys,  streams  and  mountains,  a  land  of  milk,  honey  and 
wine ;  a  land  of  whose  metropolis  there  now  in  his  sight  he  could 
say  from  his  heart — "  Beautiful  for  situation,  is  she  *  *  *  walk 
about  her  and  go  round  about  her  :  tell  the  towers  thereof.  Mark 
ye  well  her  bulwarks,  consider  her  palaces ;  that  ye  may  tell  it  to 
the  generation  following."  And  now  he  knew  by  the  spirit  of 
prophecy  that  was  in  him,  that  in  a  single  generation  or  so  a  great 
Roman  commander  would  besiege  that  beloved  city,  would  capture 
it  and  would  signalize  his  victory  by  ravages,  destructions  and  mur- 
ders, so  terrible  that  mankind  forever  should  remember  them  and 
mourn  for  the  queen  city  of  the  earth. 

Therefore  the  blessed  Jesus  wept,  and  while  the  happy  multi- 
tude shouted,  still  he  wept. 

But  all  this  was  easy  to  be  averted.  If  only  she  could  receive 
her  Messiah,  she  need  not  fall.  This  was  the  special  day  of  God's 
visitation  to  her.  He  had  sent  his  Son  to  her.  Jesus  had  preached 
in  her  streets.  He  had  shown  her  his  miracles.  He  had  borne  with 
her  and  entreated.  "  O  Jerusalem,  Jerusalem,  thou  that  killest  the 
prophets  and  stonest  them  which  are  sent  unto  thee ;  how  often 
would  I  have  gathered  thy  children  together,  as  a  hen  doth  gather 
her  brood  under  her  wings,  and  ye  would  not." 

The  tears  of  Jesus  over  Jerusalem,  were  the  tears  of  the 
Redeemer  of  the  world  over  the  spiritual  blindness  of  those  whom 
he  has  redeemed.  He  weeps  for  their  temporal  calamities,  their 
overthrown  cities,  their  poverties,  hungers,  sicknesses,  ignorances 
and  mutual  cruelty,  brought  on  by  their  sins  ;  and  he  weeps  for  their 
spiritual  calamities,  their  dark,  low  and  terrible  states  of  soul,  where- 
by they  are  shut  out  from  the  kingdom  of  heaven. 

And  there  on  southern  Olivet,  facing  the  city,  admiring  her, 
loving  her,  sorrowing  for  her,  I  leave  him.  The  sun  shines,  I  imag- 
ine. The  earth  blooms.  The  city  of  marble  and  gold  glitters  like 
a  gem.  The  noise  of  the  shouting  people  fills  the  air.  The  green 
booths  of  the  great  Passover  assembly  stretch  away  in  the  distance. 
The  sky  resounds  with  prophetic  voices,  for  him  who  has  ears  to 
hear.  And  back  out  of  sight  as  yet,  but  close  by,  only  four  days 
off,  glooms  the  great  shadow  and  midnight  of  all  time.  Out  of 
Bethany  and  down  from  Olivet,  into  that  unfathomable  shadow,  this 


608  SERMONS. 

festive  procession  marched  ;  but  beyond  the  shadow  behold  a  light, 
a  light  most  glorious  and  divine,  upon  which  no  shadow  shall  ever 
fall.  In  that  light  resplendent,  I  see  the  resurrection  form  of  this 
man  of  Olivet ;  and  around  him  there  is  gathered  a  resurrection 
assembly,  outnumbering  this  procession  along  the  slopes  of  the 
mountain,  as  the  sands  of  the  sea  outnumber  all  mortal  numbers. 


FOREIGN  LETTERS. 


FOREIGN  LETTERS. 


Extracts  from  Letters  written  to  the  Hartford  Evening  Post 
in  the  Years  1868  and  1869. 


IRELAND. 


ON    THE    WAY   TO    KILLARNEY. 

We  sighted  the  dim  mountains  of  Ireland  at  two  o'clock  of  as 
beaming  and  perfect  a  day  as  ever  shone  on  any  land  or  any  sea, 
and  from  that  until  the  darkness  came  down,  our  progress  along  the 
coast  was  just  the  unrolling  of  a  perpetual  pomp,  and  whatever  I  have 
since  seen  or  may  hereafter  see  of  the  misery  and  squalor  of  Ireland, 
and  however  much  the  country  may  be  disparaged  in  my  hearing, 
no  matter — nothing  can  quite  do  away  that  first  fine  impression. 
The  mountains  when  first  seen,  were  covered  with  an  exquisite 
sunny  purple  veil,  and  they  seemed  hardly  more  than  a  gentle 
dream  ;  and  even  when  we  drew  near  and  began  to  distinguish  de- 
tails, light  and  shade,  cottages,  huts,  spires,  towers  and  all  the  rest, 
everything  was  softened  and  beautified  under  the  light  in  a  way 
most  wonderful  to  behold  ;  and  when  at  last  the  sun  went  down,  he 
did  it  in  a  display  such  as  one  might  not  see  again  in  a  life-time. 
It  was  not  merely  a  radiant  and  many-hued  sunset,  but  a  sunset 
among  the  mountain  peaks,  and  upon  a  land  of  story,  of  a  history 
running  back  into  the  twilight,  a  land  of  courage  and  eloquence,  of 
sorrow  and  song. 

Dear  old  Ireland  !  I  do  not  wonder  that  her  people  love  her, 
and  mourn  for  her,  and  plot  for  her,  and  shout  her  history  in  the 
ears  of  the  nations  wherever  they  go,  all  round  the  world.  Curses 
on  the  brute  that  won't  throw  up  his  hat  and  make  heaven  ring  for 
his  native  land ;   and  how  can  an  Irishman  in  foreign  countries, 


612  FOREIGN  LETTERS. 

with  a  heart  of  the  ordinary  Irish  size  and  sensibility — and  they  are 
apt  to  be  big  and  lively — help  reverting  to  these  fields  and  cottages, 
and  precious  home  scenes,  and  growing  red  in  the  face  when  he 
remembers  all  the  mingled  gloom  and  glory  of  his  country's  history, 
and  joining  hands  with  his  fellow  countrymen  to  keep  her  memory 
green  forever. 

I  propose  to  join  an  Irish  society  as  soon  as  I  reach  home.  I 
do  not  know  but  it  is  a  pure  invention  of  mine,  but  I  have  a  feeling 
that  there  is  more  love  in  these  huts  about  as  large  as  your  fist, 
such  as  I  kept  seeing  as  I  looked  from  the  window  of  the  car  on 
my  way  to  Killarney,  than  there  is  in  the  grand  houses  of  more 
prospered  people.  Where  people  all  live  in  one  room,  it  promotes 
fellowship,  I  should  say ;  and  I  have  always  noticed  at  home  that 
an  Irishman  thinks  more  of  a  cousin  than  we  do  of  a  brother,  and 
of  his  nearer  kinsfolk  in  the  same  proportion.  Moreover,  common 
troubles,  a  tug  together  in  the  same  great  poverty,  a  self-denial  on 
the  part  of  each  one  for  the  sake  of  the  rest,  all  this  tends  in  like 
manner  to  weave  ties  from  heart  to  heart,  which  can  never  be 
broken,  and  to  put  each  member  of  the  family  forevermore  under 
the  power  of  the  dear  homestead  and  the  dear  by-gone  years.  At 
any  rate,  I  saw  the  cottages  and  thought  these  thoughts  as  I  flew 
along. 

MUCKROSS  ABBEY. 

And  that  was  the  first  real  old-time  ruin  I  ever  saw ;  and  if  I 
was  not  afraid  some  cold-blooded,  unecstatic  creature  out  your 
way  would  laugh  at  me,  I  would  write  down  here  just  how  I  felt. 
Most  likely  I  shall  never  feel  so  again.  I'm  afraid  not.  Here  all 
my  life  I've  been  longing  for  a  ruin,  and  at  times  have  been  almost 
willing  to  be  a  ruin  myself,  just  to  look  at  it.  And  all  my  life  I've 
been  wanting  to  see  ivy,  and  ivy  on  a  ruin,  too,  with  perhaps  an  owl 
and  a  bat  and  a  few  such  homogeneous  accessories  thrown  in. 
Wherefore,  when  I  surveyed  this  half  broken-down  marble  edifice, 
some  parts  of  it  seven  hundred  years  old ;  when  I  walked  through 
it,  through  and  through,  paused  at  the  old  tombs  in  the  choir, 
delayed  in  the  well-preserved  cloisters,  saw  a  yew-tree  as  old  as  the 
building  (my  first  yew-tree,  mind  you)  filling  the  whole  garden 
upon  which  the  cloisters  opened,  looked  up  at  the  marvelous  ivy 
on  the  tower  perfectly  covering  one  side  of  it,  and,  in  the  transept, 
sat  still  and  listened,  and  took  the  whole  hush  of  the  place  and  just 


FOREIGN  LETTERS.  613 

sunk  back  into  that  old  dim  past ;  why  what  is  the  use  of  pretend- 
ing that  I  was  not  touched  on  an  entirely  new  spot,  and  touched, 
too,  in  a  way  to  be  remembered  for  many  a  day.  To  me  there  is  a 
beautiful  feeling,  a  kind  of  sweet  human  streak,  in  the  way  that  ivy 
in  this  country  takes  it  upon  itself  to  clothe  all  ruins.  As  though  it 
had  in  it  a  gentle  pity,  it  hastens  to  hide  all  deformities  and  subdue 
all  harshnesses,  and  throw  over  their  desolation  a  perfectly  bounti- 
ful beauty  which  abides,  unfading,  the  whole  year  round,  and  makes 
a  crumbling  and  broken  old  age  more  charming  even  than  youth, 
although  in  a  different  way.  The  roof  of  the  Abbey  is  entirely  gone, 
and  other  dilapidations  have  occurred  ;  but  no  matter,  and  so  much 
the  better,  in  fact.  The  walls  still  stand,  and  the  sepulchres  are 
there,  and  the  past  is  there  in  its  undiminished  power;  and  so 
much  was  I  taken  by  it  that  I  walked  two  or  three  miles  that  even- 
ing afterwards,  that  I  might  see  it  alone  and  by  moonlight,  only 
the  dead  and  I  and  the  Abbey — we  three.  It  was  nearly  midnight 
when  I  left ;  and  while  my  moonlight  was  not  so  full  as  I  needed 
for  the  full  effect  which  I  sought,  still  what  I  came  short  in  moon- 
light I  made  up  in  owls  and  so  on,  for  when  I  entered  the  nave 
I  started  one,  and  as  I  stood  and  listened,  presently  a  bat  flew  out 
of  the  ivy  on  the  tower,  and  back  and  forth,  and  the  longer  I  stood 
the  more  noises  I  heard — departed  monks  and  so  on — until  when  I 
left  the  lonely  spot,  the  building  being  fittingly  a  quarter  of  a  mile 
out  in  the  fields,  separate  from  all  the  living  and  the  present,  I 
thought  that  while  I  should  dearly  love  to  be  buried  there,  I'd 
prefer  not  to  spend  my  nights  there  beforehand.  Graveyards  and 
the  like  are  very  powerful  about  midnight,  especially  if  you  sit 
stock-still  a  long  time  and  listen. 


ENGLAND. 

HAMPTON     COURT. 

In  the  building,  which  with  its  courts  covers  eight,  acres,  there 
are  some  thousand  or  more  pictures  to  be  seen,  besides  old-time 
furniture  of  departed  kings  and  queens ;  to  all  of  which  I  paid  the 
reverence  which  was  due.  Among  the  pictures  are  some  which  I 
should  hardly  care  to  be  asked  to  carry  off  as  a  present.    Bonaparte 


614  FOREIGN  LETTERS. 

the  First  broke  out  one  day  in  his  haughty  fashion  with  the  inhu- 
man and  contemptuous  remark:  "Too  many  men  —  too  many 
men  !"  And  with  a  similar  brutality  I  exclaim  :  "Too  many  vir- 
gins and  nymphs,  and  gods  and  goddesses,  and  other  supernatural 
trash."  I  have  not  been  much  ravished  by  any  Madonna  which  I 
have  seen  yet.  And  most  of  the  Holy  Families,  thus  far,  are  a 
failure,  for  me.  So  are  all  the  forms,  heads,  and  faces  of  Christ. 
In  my  poor  judgment  Christ  cannot  be  painted,  and  whosoever 
attempts  to  express  that  inexpressible,  just  commits  a  very  human 
piece  of  stammering.  What  is  the  great  Guido's  "Ecce  Homo?" 
Nothing,  nothing.  And  Correggio's,  too?  Nothing,  I  say  again. 
And  the  Christ,  in  West's  most  impressive  and  melting  of  pictures, 
"Christ  healing  the  sick?"  Almost  nothing  compared  with  the 
august  reality  as  it  stands  in  Christian  feeling.  One  could  weep  to 
think  that  Christs  have  been  painted  by  man  in  all  ages.  Murillo's 
celebrated  Holy  Family  here  in  the  National  gallery  is  a  very  rich 
and  sweet  and  eloquent  thing,  and  one  at  first  is  almost  of  a  mind 
to  accept  that  darling  young  form  and  face  in  the  foreground,  so 
sweetly  human  and  yet  so  exalted ;  but  on  a  second  thought  one 
sees  (as  I  do)  that  Christ,  even  in  his  youth,  is  beyond  the  reach 
of  art.  It  is  a  good  and  beautiful  thing  that  men  in  all  ages  have 
wanted  to  tell  of  Christ  in  their  art,  and  their  struggles  of  genius 
have  been  triumphant  in  some  minor  respects,  no  doubt ;  but  they 
can  never  tell  the  whole  story,  and  it  jars  one  to  see  how  far  they 
fail  of  the  heart's  ideal.  All  of  which  I  launch  out  for  the  comfort 
of  it,  not  knowing  precisely  how  much  heresy  there  may  be  in  it, 
nor,  in  my  blessed  ignorance,  caring ;  but  perfectly  willing,  never- 
theless, to  go  on  seeing  and  hearing  and  studying,  till  somewhere 
on  this  planet  or  some  other,  I  find  on  some  canvas  in  full  majesty 
and  benignity,  may-be,  him  whom  the  ages  worship,  and  in  whom 
our  countless  art-sensations  live. 

THE   BANK   OF   ENGLAND 

stands  square  and  solid  on  an  area  of  four  acres,  and  is  worth 
visiting,  although  I  was  not  led  to  it  by  any  commanding  interest 
in  it,  but  partly  because  I  was  offered  a  permit  and  the  favor  of  his 
company  by  a  cheery  and  genial  Englishman,  a  lawyer,  whose 
rotund,  intelligent  and  hearty  face  would  be  worth  one  thousand 
pounds  a  year  to  any  man,  and  is  a  public  benefaction  wherever  it 
goes.     A  full-blooded,  cultivated  Englishman,  when  you  get  inside 


FOREIGN  LETTERS.  615 

of  him  by  showing  your  right  to  go  there,  is  a  first-rate  human 
being,  and  you  may  count  on  him  till  the  last  shot  is  fired.  I  con- 
fess to  a  love  of  him,  and  do  greatly  like  to  take  the  shock,  or  the 
steady  current,  as  the  case  may  be,  of  his  splendid  magnetism. 
His  beef  and  his  port,  and  his  athletic  out-door  life,  and  his 
glorious  self-esteem,  and  a  dozen  other  similar  substantial,  seem  to 
conspire  to  make  for  him  a  presence,  and  a  red-blooded  vigor  in 
every  direction,  which  is  very  breezy  and  stimulative  and  good, 
especially  for  people  who  are  a  little  pale  and  thin,  and  of  a  too 
humble  and  self-distrustful  build.  So  I  followed  the  lead  of  the 
lawyer  and  went  around  the  bank,  and  could  not  help  liking  every- 
thing that  he  did. 

It  is  a  great  affliction  to  have  much  money.  One  never  has 
any  peace  till  he  gets  rid  of  it.  Here  now  this  great  bank  can 
hardly  sleep  nights  for  fear  that  some  one  will  be  thieving  its  treas- 
ures. It  has  a  company  of  soldiers  come  down  from  the  Tower  of 
London  every  night  to  stand  guard  within  its  walls.  And  as  for  the 
daylight  hours,  why,  it  has  its  whole  force  of  work-people,  twelve 
hundred  strong,  ready  to  fly  to  arms  in  any  emergency,  they  being 
organized  and  disciplined  as  a  military  force,  and  every  man  know- 
ing his  exact  place,  should  an  alarm  be  raised.  And  you  may  go 
clear  around  that  four  acres  of  granite  and  not  find  a  single  outside 
window.  It  is  all  wall  and  nothing  else.  And  all  the  way  around 
are  stones  so  arranged  that  they  can  be  suddenly  displaced  for  the 
protrusion  of  rifles.  And  when  you  are  visiting  the  interior,  as  you 
pass  from  room  to  room,  bells  ring  and  guards  fly  about  until  you 
might  think  they  had  taken  you  for  a  king  and  were  paying  you 
honor,  but  that  isn't  it  a  bit.  It  is  because  you  are  probably  a 
thief  and  will  be  pocketing  thousand-pound  notes  or  great  bars  of 
gold,  if  you  have  a  chance.  And  they  never  permit  you  to  enter 
the  vaults  where  the  bullion  is,  except  in  the  presence  of  a  director 
of  the  bank.  "With  us  the  president  himself  went,  we  being  more 
than  ordinarily  suspicious  characters,  I  suppose  ;  for  while  a  clergy- 
man, by  virtue  of  his  office  and  pretensions,  is  under  special  pledges 
not  to  steal,  by  virtue  of  his  poverty  he  is  under  uncommon  temp- 
tation to  do  it.  When  we  went  into  the  room  where  their  coin  and 
bank-notes  are  gathered  in  almost  fabulous  sums,  the  treasury,  four 
men  watched  us,  with  I  do  not  know  how  many  more  hidden 
behind  screens  and  doors.  And  when  they  put  into  my  hand  a 
package  worth  five  millions  of  dollars  in  gold,  I  wondered  that  the 


616  FOREIGN  LETTERS. 

entire  building  did  not  quake.  They  expected  to  see  me  quake,  I 
presume ;  but  I  didn't  half  so  much  as  I  do  when  I  draw  my 
monthly  salary  at  home.  Now,  what  is  the  use  of  being  immensely 
rich  and  living  in  perpetual  consternation,  like  that  great  bank  ?  I 
would  not  change  places  with  it  for  the  world.  The  president  of 
the  concern  has  a  great  salary,  I  was  told ;  I  was  about  to  put  down 
here  how  much,  but  do  not  dare  trust  my  memory  on  the  subject, 
so  name  any  figure  you  please,  and  it  is  more  than  that ;  but  what 
is  that  to  peace  of  mind  ? 

I  left  the  vast  building  in  a  partially  dazed  condition,  confused 
by  the  enormous  and  unaccustomed  figures  and  facts  which  they 
had  dispensed  to  me,  perfectly  turned  round  by  the  many  rooms, 
halls  and  staircases,  through  which  I  had  been  led,  wondering  how 
any  one  in  England  could  be  poor,  with  such  a  mighty  affair  as  that 
making  money  in  full  run  all  the  time,  speculating  as  to  what  rank 
among  human  occupations  ought  in  fact  to  be  assigned  to  this 
handling  of  money,  and  sure  that  my  pockets  were  just  as  empty  as 
when  I  went  in. 

THE   QUEEN'S   STABLES. 

I  looked  into  the  Queen's  stables  both  at  Windsor  and  at 
Buckingham  Palace  in  London,  and  should  quite  like  to  be  one  of 
her  four  or  five  hundred  horses.  It  must  be  solid  comfort  to  be  as 
handsome  as  they  are  ;  handsome,  I  mean,  in  the  grand,  solid  way, 
and  not  merely  doll-like ;  and  to  live  in  such  nice  rooms,  too,  and 
not  have  to  comb  your  own  hair  nor  wash  your  own  face,  but  be 
combed  and  rubbed  and  all  by  a  man  who  is  proud  to  do  it  for 
you;  and  to  have  such  lots  of  good  carriages  to  draw  about, 
especially  the  great  state-carriage,  as  large  as  a  small  house,  weigh- 
ing four  tons,  and  burnished  and  bedecked  beyond  all  account, 
while  the  harnesses  for  the  eight  cream-colored  horses  that  draw  it 
up  to  the  Parliament  House  and  back,  when  the  Queen  goes  up  in 
state,  are  fairly  stiff  with  gold.  Moreover,  it  must  give  one  a  good 
feeling  to  have  a  splendid-looking  man,  tall,  finely  proportioned, 
and  with  an  air  like  a  bishop,  sit  in  an  office  by  the  great  outside 
gate  (as  at  the  Queen's  stables  in  London)  clothed  in  gorgeous  red 
velvet  from  head  to  feet,  and  look  down  on  all  applicants  for 
admission,  and  tell  them  whether  they  can  come  in  or  not.  And 
then  to  carry  kings  and  queens  and  young  princes  and  princesses 
on  your  back  all  about  the  country  on  a  smart  gallop,  while  every- 


FOREIGN  LETTERS.  617 

body  looks  and  takes  off  his  hat  !  Why,  I've  been  delighted  to  get 
down  upon  my  hands  and  knees  and  carry  even  an  ordinary  little 
American  boy  whom  I  know ;  and  what  must  it  be  to  have  been 
born  on  all  fours  and  to  carry  a  high-born — yes,  tip-top  born — 
English  boy  ! 


ANTWERP. 

THE    MARKET    PLACE. 

Everywhere  in  Europe,  thus  far,  we  have  observed  these 
market  places,  where  you  can  see  the  common  people  just  as  they 
are,  notice  their  costumes,  hear  their  noisy  chaffer,  and  mark  their 
forty  idiosyncrasies.  I  like  to  be  among  them  and  feel  the  play  of 
their  life  about  me.  They  are  very  vivacious  and  demonstrative, 
but  never  rude.  What  unseemly  words  they  may  sometimes  vent 
are  all  lost  to  me,  and  so  I  have  an  impression  that  they  never 
speak  such.  I  have  an  exceedingly  cordial  feeling  towards  the 
common  people  of  the  Continent,  so  far  as  I  have  seen  them.  I 
have  longed  to  speak  with  them  and  let  them  know  how  I  go  out 
to  them  in  all  the  joys  and  sorrows  of  their  lot.  A  hundred  kind- 
nesses they  have  done  me  as  I  passed  along.  I  have  not,  in  a 
single  instance,  met  a  rebuff  where  I  have  sought  their  aid  to  find 
my  way,  or  to  gain  information  as  to  a  hotel  or  rail-train,  or  any- 
thing else,  and  generally  they  have  volunteered  more  than  I  sought, 
being  pleased,  evidently,  to  study  out  my  pantomime,  and  further 
the  wishes  of  such  a  poor  jabbering  thing.  In  a  few  instances  I 
have  met  stolidity,  which  had,  at  first,  the  appearance  of  unwilling- 
ness, but  that  is  all. 

THE    CATHEDRAL. 

No  American  ever  saw  in  his  own  country  such  a  cathedral  as 
there  is  in  Antwerp.  To  begin  with,  it  is  so  old  that  the  elements 
have  actually  gnawed  into  the  stone  of  it,  eating  away  the  sharp 
edges,  roughing  the  face,  and  crumbling  the  delicate  stone  fret-work 
woven  about  the  spire,  in  such  a  manner  that  it  needs  the  strength 
of  the  iron  rods,  which  were  run  through  it  when  the  edifice  was 
built.  And  it  contains  pictures  which  have  won  the  praise  of 
generations,  and  would  scarcely  be  exchanged  for  the  wealth  of 
40 


618  FOREIGN  LETTERS. 

kingdoms.  It  stands  in  the  form  of  a  cross,  a  form  to  which  all 
there  is  in  us  responds.  We  are  feeling  all  the  while  that  it  was  a 
touching  thing  in  the  old  builders  to  pile  up  their  structures  in  that 
shape,  doing  thus  what  they  could  to  make,  what  was  at  first  a 
shame,  the  world's  glory  and  joy.  One  sees  more  of  that  symbol 
in  these  lands  than  he  does  at  home,  and  I  do  not  deny  that  I  am 
pleased  to  see  it,  although  it  might  be  expected  of  me  by  some, 
perhaps,  that  I  should  show  my  Protestantism  by  disrelishing  such 
a  various  and  universal  display  of  crosses  and  crucifixes.  Some  of 
the  crucifixes  which  one  sees  perpetually,  in  churches  and  by  the 
road-side,  in  Catholic  countries,  are  rather  tedious  to  the  eye  of 
mere  art ;  and,  in  addition  to  that,  no  doubt  a  brilliant  argument 
can  be  made  on  the  "  excessive  and  superstitious  exaltation  of  this 
and  other  symbols  ; "  but  1  find  myself  ignominiously  declining  the 
argument,  and  overlooking  the  poor  art  very  much,  and  forgetting 
everything  except  this  :  that,  above  all  differences  of  creed  and 
nationality,  and  in  spite  of  all  ignorances,  perversions  and  super- 
stitions, the  great,  solemn,  melting  fact  of  Christ's  death  for  the 
world,  is  lifted  up  as  by  all  human  hands  on  spires,  highways,  and 
mountain  heights,  in  art,  worship  and  song,  being  thus  celebrated 
and  magnified  and  kept  resounding,  so  that  he  who  is  ignorant  of  it 
must  be  willfully  ignorant,  and  he  who  is  ruined  forever  must  be 
ruined  in  defiance  of  such  a  din  of  testimony  and  warning  as  is 
sufficient  to  fill  the  whole  arch  of  heaven. 

The  Antwerp  Cathedral  is  a  Latin  cross,  three  hundred  and 
ninety  feet  one  way,  and  two  hundred  and  fifty  feet  the  other.  The 
spire  is  four  hundred  and  four  feet  high  and  you  ascend  it  by  six 
hundred  and  sixteen  steps,  and  in  it  hang  eighty-three  bells  ;  and 
those  bells  you  can  hear  every  fifteen  minutes  all  day  and  all  night ; 
when  the  half  hours  are  completed,  you  can  hear  a  good  deal  of 
them,  and  when  the  whole  hours  are  completed  you  have  a  pro- 
longed concert  of  them ;  and  at  certain  times,  on  certain  days,  a 
musician  sits  at  a  key-board  and  plays  on  them  at  greater  length 
yet,  so  that  that  old  tower  is  one  of  the  most  voiceful  and  indefati- 
gable melodists  the  world  ever  knew ; — and  when  I  call  it  a 
melodist,  I  mean  it,  for  those  eighty-three  bells,  while  they  are 
sonorous,  are  subdued  and  soft,  as  though  the  centuries  had  mel- 
lowed them ;  and  when  I  leaned  from  my  window  in  the  night,  and 
traced  the  spire  up  till  it  was  lost  to  my  eye  among  the  stars,  and 
listened  to  those  chimes  up  there  in  the  stillness  and  the  vastness,  I 


FOREIGN  LETTERS.  619 

thought  nothing  could  be  finer,  more  soothing,  more  elevating ; 
that  they  were  as  though  the  stars  themselves  were  singing  in  their 
courses  and  their  gentle  voices  were  floating  down  upon  the  world. 
And  I  thought,  too,  that  if  the  Antwerp  people  wrangled  and 
jangled  and  lived  meanly  right  under  those  eternal,  sweet-toned 
bells,  they  ought  to  be  given  over  by  both  Catholics  and  Protest- 
ants, and  left  to  go  to  their  own  place  post-haste.  Still  I  noticed 
next  day  that  even  I,  myself,  had  subsided  to  the  same  old 
dog- trot  as  before,  and  did  not  half  live  up  to  the  rhythm 
of  the  bells ;  though  I'm  thinking  that  perhaps  some  day,  after 
all,  I  may  show  that  I  secretly  caught  something  of  their  con- 
cord— for  how  can  it  be,  pray,  that  these  things  should  not  fashion 
us  just  a  little  ? 

RUBENS   AND    VAN    DYCK. 

Of  the  paintings  in  Antwerp,  and  there  are  a  goodly  number 
of  them  there,  those  which  most  drew  my  attention  were  by  Rubens 
and  his  distinguished  scholar,  Anthony  Van  Dyck.  These  artists 
both  grappled  with  sacred  subjects  of  the  highest  cast,  and  my  brief 
study  of  their  works,  whatever  else  it  has  failed  to  do,  has  not  failed 
to  raise  in  me  an  insatiable  desire  to  return  to  them  some  day  again 
before  I  die.  It  is  curious  how  the  great  monarchs  among  men 
establish  their  ascendency  over  us,  the  moment  we  enter  their 
presence  and  come  within  the  sweep  of  their  magnetism.  Here 
now  are  these  painters.  I  had  hardly  saluted  them  before  I  began 
to  be  grateful  to  them,  and  now,  should  any  one  in  any  way  wrong 
them,  slandering  their  name,  lying  about  their  pictures,  underrating 
their  artistic  aims,  striving  in  any  manner  to  qualify  their  good 
standing  with  the  next  ages,  I  should  feel  as  though  personally 
attacked ;  and  if  fire  or  the  ravages  of  war  or  anything  else  should 
destroy  or  dim  certain  works  of  theirs  which  I  have  been  privileged 
to  see,  I  should  mourn  as  under  a  personal  bereavement.  A  real 
great  man  is  a  treasure,  and  the  benefaction  even  of  his  silent 
presence  among  us  is  more  unto  our  hearts  than  all  the  gold  of  the 
world. 


ROTTERDAM. 
As  we  entered  our  hotel  in  Rotterdam,  there,  nearly  in  front 
of  it,  a  great  East  Indiaman  was  lying  (for  the  city  is  only  eighteen 
miles  from  the  sea,  and  the  largest  vessels  come  up  to  it),  and  on 


620  FOREIGN  LETTERS. 

her  decks  were  swarms  of  soldiers,  for  Rotterdam  has  great  inter- 
course with  India,  and  on  the  deck  were  swarms  of  their  friends 
and  kinsfolk,  men,  women  and  children,  bidding  them  good-bye  ; 
and,  though  I  wouldn't  have  believed  it  if  I  hadn't  seen  it  with  my 
own  eyes,  those  mere  Rotterdamers  were  crying  just  as  you  and  I 
and  lots  of  old  ironsides  did  in  1861,  when  our  men  used  to  go  off 
to  the  war ;  and  I  loitered  a  minute  to  see  whether  they  did  it  pre- 
cisely like  other  folks — and  they  did.  The  women  put  their  aprons 
to  their  eyes,  the  men  looked  into  the  air  in  a  brave  way  and  kept 
winking,  and  the  little  children  hung  on  to  skirts  all  about,  and 
looked  up  and  wondered,  and  in  lack  of  perfect  knowledge  of  India 
cried  because  the  rest  did.  I  was  on  the  brink  of  crying,  too  ;  but 
as  I  did  not  understand  the  language,  and  as  they  seemed  to  have 
help  enough,  I  hurried  into  the  hotel  just  in  time  to  save  myself.  I 
had  a  weak  little  feeling  in  a  spot  in  me  for  some  time,  but  time 
and  dinner  gradually  brought  me  around. 


THE  HAGUE. 

We  saw,  in  a  public  square,  a  bronze  statue  of  William  I,  Prince 
of  Orange,  with  his  dog  at  his  side — and  that  I  liked,  for  the  dog 
saved  him  from  assassination  once  and  pined  himself  to  death  after 
he  was,  at  a  later  day,  actually  assassinated.  The  story  is  told  on  a 
monument  raised  in  another  place  to  the  memory  of  William,  and 
there,  too,  the  dog  is  to  be  seen  lying  at  the  feet  of  his  master. 
Where  the  dog  is  now  I  do  not  know — any  more  than  I  know 
where  William  is — together,  though,  somewhere,  very  likely ;  I  hope 
so.  The  tidings  have  come  to  me  recently  that  a  dog  which  I 
bought  some  ten  years  ago,  and  whose  manner  of  life  and  daily 
conversation  from  that  day  to  this  has  been  matter  of  unceasing 
remark  and  admiration  in  the  family,  has  succumbed  to  mortality, 
and  gone  under  the  sod  in  the  back  yard,  where  a  rose  bush  has 
been  planted  at  his  head  and  another  at  his  feet,  that  the  faithful 
old  soul  may  blossom  in  the  dust,  and  have  over  him  whensoever 
the  springs  come  the  customary  types  of  a  resurrection.  And  so  I 
am  tender  on  the  whole  subject  of  dogs  (good  ones),  and  would 
confess,  if  I  dared,  that  when  old  Jack's  decease  reached  me,  and  I 
sat  down  in  my  room  at  nightfall  and  thought  it  all  over,  and 
remembered  that  I  should  never  see  him  again  when  I  went  home, 


FOREIGN  LETTERS.  621 

on  Thanksgiving  days  and  Christmas  days,  and  should  not  have  him 
to  leap  upon  me,  on  my  return  after  weeks  and  months  of  absence, 
and  should  never  have  his  benignant  old  countenance  look  up 
into  mine  any  more,  nor  his  joyful  bark,  nor  his  joyful  great  tail, 
nor  the  great  example  of  his  virtues,  I  moistened  my  two  eyes 
without  half  trying,  and  wanted  to  go  home.  I  had  rather  be  a 
good  dog  than  a  bad  man,  and  run  the  risk  of  it.  Jack  will  never 
have  a  fine  bronze  statue  in  the  public  square,  because  I  never 
shall,  but  that  is  the  only  reason.  When  I  order  mine  I'll  order 
his,  and  we  will  go  down  to  posterity  together — immortal  dog, 
immortal  man. 


THE   CITY   OF   AMSTERDAM. 

ITS   PICTURES. 

There  is  a  permanent  gallery  of  them  there,  and  a  gallery 
which  seemed  to  be  partly  permanent  and  partly  annual.  The 
paintings  are  mostly  Dutch,  by  Rembrandt,  Paul  Potter,  Cuyp, 
Ruysdael,  Wouvermans,  Van  der  Heist,  Gerard  Dow,  Teniers,  Van 
Dyck,  and  others.  I  run  over  some  of  the  names,  as  knowing  that 
some  of  your  readers  will  recognize  them  as  old  friends.  I  met 
Rembrandt  there  again  with  more  than  common  satisfaction,  having 
learned,  even  in  England,  to  love  his  vigor  and  his  rich  and  swarthy 
coloring.  I  found,  too,  that  Ruysdael  and  Wouvermans  have  painted 
what  I  can  very  much  enjoy — yes,  and  others  besides — the  list  of 
them  is  getting  longer  than  I  thought  it  would.  Great  men  some- 
times select  subjects  on  which  it  is  impossible  for  them  to  do  their 
grandest,  and  sometimes  a  more  common  man  will  choose  a  theme 
so  worthy,  and  will  work  it  up  with  such  sincerity  and  such  a  lofty 
intention,  that  you  fellowship  him  and  love  him  in  spite  of  every- 
thing. A  painting  that  has  not  much  of  an  idea  in  it  is  an  irre- 
deemably empty  thing,  I  do  not  care  whose  it  is.  Mere  technical 
skill — skill  in  composition,  power  as  a  colorist,  and  all  that,  are  not 
enough.  They  need  to  be  put  out  into  ranges  of  effort  that  are 
large  and  noble,  before  they  can  take  much  hold  on  men,  and 
entitle  themselves  to  the  world's  praise. 

By  the  way,  how  did  the  ancients  live  without  landscapes  in 
their  painting?  Isn't  it  a  privilege  to  have  been  born  since  land- 
scape painting  was  ?     I   could  kiss  the  feet  of  some  men  whose 


622  FOREIGN  LETTERS. 

representations  of  natural  scenes  I  have  looked  at — Turner,  for 
example.  I  was  not  in  the  room  in  the  National  Gallery,  London, 
where  his  pictures  are  assembled,  half  so  long  as  I  wished  and 
needed  to  be,  and  I  can  understand  how  many  of  his  works  should 
receive  no  notice  from  the  multitudes  who  drift  by  them  ;  but  I  saw 
enough  of  him  to  assure  me  forever  that,  when  God  sent  him  into 
the  world,  he  meant  to  have  mankind  enriched  by  interpretations, 
most  masterly  and  immortal,  of  the  manifold  great  creation  about 
us.  I  should  be  happy  to  trade  off  all  that  I  ever  did  or  ever  shall  do 
for  single  ones  of  his  landscapes.  It  is  marvelous  how  artists  can, 
with  such  sheer  daubs  and  chaoses  of  color  (as  they  seem  at  first), 
contrive  to  reveal  so  much  of  what  a  person,  such  a  novice  as  I, 
would  call  positively  unreportable  in  any  way. 


GERMANY. 

ON    THE     RHINE. 

Whoever  writes  of  the  Rhine  should  do  it  with  a  pen  dipped  in 
light,  while  I  can  command  nothing  better  than  ink,  but  with  what 
I  have,  I  will  splutter  along  and  do  the  best  I  can.  I  should  like 
to  shoulder  my  knapsack,  and  spend  a  month  or  two  in  leisurely 
walking,  and  day-long  dreaming  on  that  beautiful  river,  in  the  right 
season  of  the  year ;  sitting  down  on  every  stone  I  came  to,  trudging 
up  every  valley,  climbing  every  castled  height,  reading  all  the 
Rhine  legends,  stories  and  poems  that  were  ever  written,  steeping 
myself  in  the  delicious  historical  atmosphere  of  the  river,  re-peopling 
the  many  castles  of  it,  visiting  the  unparalleled,  romantic  maidens 
that  used  to  live  in  them,  as  thick  as  morning-glories  around  a  cot- 
tage door,  tilting  with  the  knights  and  having  duels  with  them  over 
the  maidens,  reproducing  the  thousand  and  one  marvels  of  that 
picturesque  old  time ;  the  sounds  in  the  air,  the  apparitions,  the 
river  nymphs,  and  forest  nymphs,  and  I  know  not  what  else,  till  at 
last  the  tired  had  all  gone  out  of  me  and  I  cared  no  more  for  the 
nineteenth  century  and  its  stir  and  din,  than  a  man  asleep  in  his 
bed,  lapped  in  gorgeous  dreams,  does  for  the  wind  that  roars  and 
flurries  and  kicks  up  a  dust  outside  of  his  locked  window.  Pretty 
tired  people  sometimes  long  for  what  they  call  the  rest  of  the  grave, 
but  that  is  going  into  it  a  little  too  deep  ;  the  wide-awake  semi-. 


FOREIGN  LETTERS.  623 

languor,  the  retrospect  and  reverie  and  snake-like  lying  on  a  sunny 
rock,  of  a  Rhine  sojourn,  as  set  forth  above,  would  be  nearer  to  my 
mind,  I  think.  I  would  have  though,  a  very  congenial  friend  or  two 
alongside  if  I  could,  or  perhaps  about  forty  rods  behind,  for  fear 
that  they  might  speak  to  me  or  I  to  them  at  the  wrong  moment 
some  time,  and  break  up  some  golden  dream  of  theirs  or  mine.  I 
fear,  that  if  I  had  such  a  chance  as  that,  I  should  never  be  seen  in 
Hartford  any  more  ;  but  that  the  last  you  would  hear  of  me  would  be 
to  the  effect  that  an  old  man  with  long  white  hair  and  dreamy  loiter- 
ing step,  whose  history  nobody  knew,  but  who  for  some  two  hundred 
years  had  been  seen  slowly  journeying  to  and  fro,  up  and  down,  in 
the  valley  of  the  Rhine,  familiarly  known  by  all  the  children  in  all 
the  cottages  along  for  generations,  and  not  unloved  for  his  peaceful 
and  meditative  air  and  slow-spoken  and  low-spoken  kindliness  (for 
I  think  my  natural  acidity  could  be  sweetened  even  to  that  if  only  I 
could  get  Rhine  enough  into  it)  had  suddenly  disappeared  from  his 
haunts  and  customary  rounds,  and  was.  popularly  believed  to  have 
been  taken  up  into  heaven,  long  gray  hair,  staff  and  all.  I  am  in 
hopes  that  that  is  about  the  way  things  will  go  in  the  coming  golden 
age  ;  and  that  men  instead  of  fretting  themselves  to  death  and  drop- 
ping down  at  about  forty  years  or  so,  will  stay  and  stay  and  stay, 
growing  riper  and  riper  and  more  and  more  benignant,  until  in  some 
little  flurry  of  wind  some  day,  like  that  which  shakes  down  the  per- 
fect apple  in  the  still  autumnal  sunlight,  they  will  be  shaken  off  into 
the  Eternal  without  a  twist  or  a  bruise  or  a  shudder. 

COBLENZ. 

There  is  a  palace  of  the  King  of  Prussia  at  Coblenz,  and  a 
pleasant  little  room  in  it  has  been  assigned  to  the  English  Church 
for  purposes  of  worship.  So  I  dropped  in  there  at  the  morning  and 
the  evening  service.  I  found  a  full  and  exceeding  respectable 
assembly  of  English  people,  and  I  much  liked  the  sort  of  God-save- 
the-Queen  heartiness  with  which  they  walked  into  the  business  of 
the  occasion.  It  is  very  stupid  in  me  to  see  things  so,  I  know,  but 
the  English  in  these  chapels  on  the  Continent,  when  carrying  through 
their  services,  seem  to  me  to  be  doing  it  not  alone  on  the  spur  of 
reverence  for  the  Divine,  but  considerably  out  of  respect  for  British 
institutions,  just  as  they  fight  for  the  flag.  They  chant  "  Glory  be 
to  the  Father,  and  to  the  Son,  and  to  the  Holy  Ghost,"  with  their 


624  FOREIGN  LETTERS. 

fists  doubled  up  and  their  eyes  over  their  shoulders  to  see  if  any- 
body dares  deny  it.  And  of  course  nobody  dares,  with  such  big- 
bodied,  resolute-looking  people  eyeing  straight  at  him.  I  wouldn't 
do  it  for  the  world.  I  should  expect  a  British  regiment  to  be  sent 
after  me  in  ten  minutes.  No  doubt  the  fact  that  these  worshiping 
people  feel  themselves  in  a  foreign  land,  where  another  language 
and  other  institutions  and  ofttimes  another  religion  are  in  the 
ascendency,  and  the  miserable  foreigners  outnumber  them  millions 
to  one,  rouses  them  into  a  more  decisive  individuality  and  self- 
assertion,  and  brings  out  the  British  in  them  as  long  as  stag's  horns. 
Well,  let  it  stick  out,  I  say.  I  look  upon  downright  conceit  for 
one's  own  country,  and  a  robust  assertion  of  her  merits  in  the  face 
of  all  creation,  much  as  I  do  upon  a  father's  pride  of  his  boy,  or  a 
boy's  idea  that  his  father  is  the  tip-top  of  the  lower  creation.  I  used 
to  think  my  father  had  more  money  than  all  the  millionaires  and  all 
the  banks  in  the  country,  and  that  he  could  whip  all  men  and  devils 
combined.  And  that  made  me  feel  safe.  God  in  his  great  mercy, 
grants  us  these  fine  delusions.  And  to  be  overweighted  thus  at 
spots  in  our  constitution,  serves  a  thousand  royal  uses,  just  as  an 
arrow  needs  to  be  leaded  at  the  head  if  it  is  going  to  hit  the  mark. 

FRANKFORT   TO    HEIDELBERG. 

From  Frankfort  to  beautiful  Heidelberg,  a  journey  of  some 
three  hours  by  rail,  you  pass  through  a  perfectly  level  and  perfectly 
cultivated  country,  with  the  dim  mountains  of  France  on  the  far 
right,  and,  for  a  good  part  of  the  way,  with  the  Odenwald  and  its 
mountains  on  the  near  left.  Those  mountains  on  the  left  are  richly 
wooded  and  castle-crowned,  with  numerous  quiet  villages  along  the 
green  slopes  at  their  base,  and  I  thought  as  I  continually  watched 
them  that  nothing  could  be  more  satisfactory  to  a  tranquil-minded 
man,  who  loves  Nature  in  her  scenes  of  peace,  than  to  travel  on 
horseback  from  village  to  village,  and  from  nook  to  nook,  along  that 
mountain  road,  famous  for  its  beauty, — stopping  with  the  villagers, 
climbing  to  a  castle  occasionally,  drinking  at  the  streams,  stretching 
out  on  ihe  sunny  grass  now  and  then,  and  lazing  along  just  as  though 
life  had  no  busy  duties  and  never  came  to  an  end.  Ye  gods  !  what 
a  fair  world  this  would  be,  if  we  were  only  decent,  and  never  sick, 
and  never  hurried. 

HEIDELBERG   UNIVERSITY. 

There  is  a  very  ancient  university  in  Heidelberg,  with  some 
seven  hundred  students,  though  it  makes  no  show  of  buildings ; 


FOREIGN  LETTERS.  625 

neither  did  the  students  make  any  show  when  I  was  there,  it  being 
the  time  of  vacation ;  yet  it  must  have  been  in  good  part  out  of 
respect  to  the  American  students  there,  I  should  think,  that  the 
clergyman  in  the  English  chapel,  whose  Sabbath  service  I  attended, 
when  he  came  to  the  prayer  for  the  Queen  of  England  and  the 
Prince  and  Princess  of  Wales,  and  had  added  a  petition  for  the 
Grand  Duke  of  Baden,  went  on  to  pray  also  for  "  His  Excellency, 
the  President  of  the  United  States."  Certain  Americans  with  me 
have  claimed  that  whenever  in  the  English  service  we  have  heard 
the  President  of  the  United  States  prayed  for,  (and  we  have  heard 
it  now  in  two  or  three  places  on  the  Continent) ,  the  English  people 
have  not  put  in  the  amens  very  resonantly ;  but  upon  my  honor  I 
believe  they  are  wrong.  At  Heidelberg  I  was  too  busy  choking  back 
a  little  cry  to  see  who  said  Amen.  It  suddenly  thickens  up  my 
throat  like  a  bad  cold  to  hear  my  country  prayed  for  away  off  in 
these  lands — particularly  when  I  am  not  expecting  it — and  to  hear 
it,  too,  from  the  staid  and  order-loving  church  of  England,  which 
doesn't  admit  any  new  thing  into  her  fixed  and  venerated  service  on 
anything  less  authentic  than  an  order  straight  from  the  throne  of 
God.  One  sees  what  it  amounts  to  to  have  a  native  land,  when 
once  he  passes  out  of  it.  In  my  enthusiasm  for  these  old  countries 
I  had  begun  to  question  whether  my  attachment  to  our  raw  young 
America  might  not  be  weakened  somewhat ;  but  when  that  prayer 
came  and  I  began  to  bubble  up,  I  knew  better. 


SWITZERLAND. 


What  shall  I  say  to  you,  touching  the  view  from  Rigi's  very  top  ? 
Had  I  better  say  anything?  I  scarcely  know.  Do  you  ask  me 
whether  my  expectations  were  met  ?  O  yes  !  they  were,  and  in  one 
respect  decidedly  more  than  met.  I  refer  to  the  mountains  of  snow 
to  be  seen  off  in  several  directions.  My  friend,  those  mountains  do 
not  seem  to  be  of  the  earth.  They  taper  along  up  into  the  sky,  and 
they  take  your  mind  along  up  with  them,  until,  when  sky  and  white 
peak  meet,  you  feel  that  between  the  glory  of  one  and  the  glory  of 
the  other  there  is  absolutely  no  dissimilitude  ;  the  mountain  splendor 
merges  into  the  firmamental  splendor  without  the  least  break  or  jar  ; 
it  is  a  terrestrial  song  and  a  song  celestial  blending  perfectly,  the 


626  FOREIGN  LETTERS. 

terrestrial  refining  as  it  mounts  until  all  earthly  harshness  is  purged 
away,  and  it  flows  into  the  current  of  the  celestial,  clear,  musical  and 
divine,  making  with  it  one  indistinguishable  wave  forever.  I  had 
never  been  told  of  this,  or  if  I  had  been  I  had  forgotten  it,  and  when 
I  looked  and  saw  it  all  with  my  own  eyes,  between  gratitude  that  I 
had  had  that  privilege  before  I  die  and  such  a  transcendent  sense  of 
the  God  of  heaven  and  earth  as  I  never  knew,  and  delight  that  the 
earthly  may  sublimate  into  the  ethereal  in  that  marvelous  and  per- 
fect manner,  and  a  deep  undertone  of  suggestion  and  lofty  assurance 
that  what  white  mountains  may  do,  men  can,  and  that,  doubtless, 
everywhere  in  individual  instances  the  human  is  continually  ascend- 
ing into  the  divine,  and  that  eventually  all  mankind  will  have  reached 
that  same  whiteness  and  height  and  ineffable  splendor ;  putting  all 
these  and  other  things  together,  I  say,  I  found  I  could  do  nothing 
but  stand  and  quietly  weep  in  a  delight  which  would  not  be  con- 
tained. I  was  not  unwilling  to  die  right  where  I  stood.  I  thought 
I  wanted  to  be  off —for  death  did  not  then  occur  to  me  as  a  dark 
crisis  and  struggle,  not  at  all,  but  only  as  a  simple  natural  ascension 
under  the  lift  of  God's  gracious  laws  into  the  region  where  we 
belong. 

ALPNACHT. 

At  Alpnacht  we  spent  a  Sabbath,  and  it  was  a  Sabbath  so  retired 
and  so  full  of  the  peace  of  nature  to  us,  that  I  would  like  to  cele- 
brate it  here  in  a  word  or  two.  Alpnacht  is  right  at  the  foot  of 
Pilatus,  and  between  the  foot  of  the  mountain  and  the  lake  there  is 
just  room  enough  for  the  road  to  run,  and  the  village  of  a  dozen 
houses  to  string  along  that  one  street.  The  sun  shone  that  Sabbath, 
and  we  walked  abroad  in  it  a  considerable  part  of  the  day,  a  mile  or 
two  each  way  along  the  Lake  road.  Close  by  the  hotel  there  was  a 
Catholic  Chapel  with  a  stone  floor,  and  just  the  size  of  a  small-sized 
brown  school-house  at  a  country  cross-road  in  Connecticut ;  and  at 
three  o'clock  in  the  afternoon  the  priests  from  the  great  church  over 
a  mile  away  were  to  perform  service.  So  in  the  morning  we  did 
nothing  but  worship  under  the  sky.  We  sauntered  along,  looking 
up  the  sides  of  Pilatus  where  there  were  green  pasture  lands  and 
orchards,  and  unpainted  cottages,  and  any  amount  of  tranquillity 
and  household  happiness,  on  and  up  high  into  the  air.  We  knew 
about  that  tranquillity  and  household  happiness,  by  the  plain  impossi- 
bility that  such  a  rural  scene  as  that,  so  still  and  bright  and  full  of 


FOREIGN  LETTERS.  627 

half  holy  repose,  should  have  anything  else  in  it.  It  was  the  perfec- 
tion of  simple  country  happiness,  it  seemed  to  me.  We  picked  up 
apples.  We  sat  on  logs  by  the  wayside.  We  went  through  the 
silent  churchyard,  where  the  dead  were — which  was  the  first  hint  we 
had  had  that  they  ever  die  in  these  sweet  valleys.  We  met  boys  and 
girls,  fresh-faced,  human-faced  creatures,  just  such  as  grow  in  Amer- 
ica, who  looked  up  at  us,  the  only  strangers  in  that  region,  in  peace- 
ful wonder,  taking  off  their  hats  as  they  passed,  even  as  their  fathers 
did. 

We  listened  to  the  innumerable  cow-bells — and  a  cow-bell  in 
this  country  is'nt  a  dull-sounding  piece  of  nothing  but  sheet-iron 
such  as  we  afflict  cows  with  at  home  ;  but  it  is  a  first-class  rever- 
berator made  of  genuine  bell-metal,  and  the  tinkle  of  it  is'nt  a 
tinkle — no,  it's  a  ring,  a  melodious  ring,  a  ring  that  pleases  the 
imagination  and  adds  a  touch  of  sentiment  to  the  hills ;  and  a  big 
one,  too,  for  the  bells  themselves  are  big,  and  sufficient  often  for  the 
belfry  of  a  small  school-house.  I  noticed  this  all  through  Switzer- 
land. And  it  is  reasonable,  too,  for  the  cows  in  Switzerland  belong 
to  the  upper  classes  and  live  in  the  same  houses  with  the  people  a 
good  deal,  and  are  affectionately  watched  whenever  they  go  out  to 
grass,  and  are  not  left  to  shift  for  themselves  a  minute  ;  because,  you 
see,  if  anything  happens  to  a  man's  cows,  where  is  the  support  of  the 
family  to  come  from  ?  All  along  these  valleys  and  on  these  moun- 
tain uplands  and  slopes,  grass  is  the  great  thing,  and  that  grass  must 
be  made  to  keep  the  people  alive  somehow,  and  the  cow  is  that 
somehow.  (She  and  the  goats.)  Dear  old  creature  !  She  makes 
butter  and  milk,  and  skim-milk,  and  all  kinds  of  milk  and  cheese  ; 
and  in  winter  she  lies  in  the  bosom  of  the  family  and  keeps  them  from 
being  cold  and  lonesome ;  and  all  times  in  the  year  she  draws  carts 
with  a  meekness  that  is  equal  to  a  church  in  each  place  for  moral 
influence  ;  and  she  is  the  universal  fertilizer  so  that  the  grass  need 
not  run  out ;  and  at  last  she  gives  her  body  to  be  eaten  and  her  hide 
to  make  boots,  and  her  memory  for  a  poem  and  tradition  forever. 
In  the  early  spring  the  cows  are  driven  in  companies  under  cow- 
herds up  to  the  lower  pastures  on  the  mountains,  and  as  the  season 
advances  they  go  higher  and  higher,  till  in  the  full  greenness  of 
summer  they  rest  in  the  topmost  pastures,  making  milk,  butter  and 
cheese  all  the  way  you  see — and  then  in  the  fall  they  are  driven 
gradually  back  into  the  warm  valleys  again  ;  and  we  have  met  droves 
of  them  on  their  way  home  for  the  winter,  fat  and  milky  and  balmy- 


628  FOREIGN  LETTERS. 

mouthed,  with  the  cowherds  behind  and  the  noise  of  the  bells 
everywhere. 

I  always  wanted  to  put  my  arms  about  the  necks  of  the  whole 
crowd.     Yes,  they  kept  that  Sabbath  with  us  at  Alpnacht. 

ON    THE    ROAD    TO    INTERLAKEN. 

In  this  village,  too,  there  was  a  great  Catholic  church,  and  in 
that  church  the  remains  of  St.  Nikolaus  (so  called)  who  lived  and 
died  in  that  valley  hundreds  of  years  ago,  and  was  of  such  influence 
on  account  of  his  great  intelligence  and  wisdom  and  integrity  and 
piety,  that  the  name  of  him  is  a  gracious  presence  yet  through  the 
whole  region,  and  his  pictured  face  is  scattered  through  the  homes 
and  huts  of  the  people  far  and  near,  like  the  face  of  the  Virgin.  He 
was  not  an  ecclesiastic,  but  a  simple  farmer,  full  of  character,  retired, 
unambitious  and  rustic,  but  a  natural  king  nevertheless,  whom  men 
high  in  state  used  to  visit  for  his  counsel,  and  whose  appearance  in 
any  anxious  state  deliberation  was  the  signal  of  peace  and  light.  As 
I  walked  about  the  church  and  read  of  him,  and  then  looked  off 
upon  the  hills  around  which  his  memory  lingers,  I  concluded  that 
that  kind  of  living  is  about  the  ideal  thing ;  that  if  I  only  had  a 
valley  and  a  good  start  I'd  try  it  myself;  that  valleys  remote  from 
the  thronged  world,  where  nothing  more  stimulating  than  a  stage- 
coach ever  goes  through,  where  each  day  is  like  the  one  that  went 
before  it  and  all  days  are  Sabbath-like  for  stillness,  where  life  is  not 
tense  and  complex  and  fictitious,  but  leisurely,  simple  and  natural, 
where  neighbors  are  so  far  apart  that  they  do  not  jostle,  and  one 
can  drink  out  of  his  own  brook,  and  turn  his  children  out  to  grass, 
and  drop  down  and  say  his  prayers  anywhere  without  being  over- 
heard ;  that  such  places  must  be,  on  the  whole,  unusually  favorable 
to  a  serene  and  ripening  saintship,  and  an  honest  death,  and  a  grave 
where  the  country-people  shall  gather  and  tell  their  children  about 
you  and  call  you  good  Brother  Nikolaus,  a  specimen  of  your  bones 
meanwhile  being  exhibited  in  the  one  village  church. 

AN   ALPINE   HORN. 

At  Lauterbrunnen  I  for  the  first  time  heard  an  Alpine  horn. 
And  tried  to  blow  it  too,  and  was  as  red  in  the  face  as  though  I  had 
swallowed  a  horn  or  two.  The  horn  which  I  saw  there  was  seven  or 
eight  feet  long,  curved  at  the  large  end,  made  of  wood  bound  round 
with  thongs,  I  should  say,  and  quite  too  heavy  to  be  held  out  at 


FOREIGN  LETTERS.  629 

arm's  length,  especially  when  one  wants  his  entire  and  unabridged 
muscle  and  wind  for  the  blowing  business.  You  will  ask  me  whether 
anything  really  musical  could  come  out  of  that  wooden  hole  by  ever 
so  much  blowing?  Yes,  there  could.  The  double  echo  of  that  horn 
rolling  up  the  great  mountain-side  toward  the  Jungfrau  as  regularly 
as  that  fellow  swelled  and  tooted,  is  among  my  most  exquisite  rec- 
ollections of  the  Alps.  When  the  sound  emerged  from  the  flaring 
end  of  the  concern  it  was  bright,  wild,  lightsome,  full  of  the  air  and 
full  of  the  hills,  a  delicious  bit  for  the  imagination  ;  but  when,  after  a 
little  interval,  the  mountains  caught  it  and  dandled  it  to  and  fro  from 
height  to  height  as  in  gentle  play,  I  noticed,  and  noticed  breathlessly, 
that  it  was  gradually  refined  and  softened,  each  echo  being  mel- 
lower and  more  musical  than  the  preceding  one,  until  when  it  died 
away  at  its  loftiest,  it  had  discharged  itself  of  every  stain  of  the 
earthly,  and  had  risen  into  the  pure  spiritual  faint  and  far ;  so  that 
if  God's  angels  bent  low  and  caught  it,  and  carried  it  up  and  made 
it  to  be  forevermore  one  of  their  own  melodies,  I  do  not  a  bit 
wonder  at  it,  for  I  doubt  whether  the  best  of  them  could  beat  it  in 
the  best  flight  he  ever  made.  I  recollect  writing  to  you  of  the 
ascent  of  the  earthly  into  the  heavenly  in  the  case  of  those  so  lofty 
snow-mountains  which  I  saw  from  the  top  of  Rigi ;  and  now  here 
was  another  analogous  instance,  this  being  an  appeal  to  the  ear,  and 
that  to  the  eye.  And  the  impression  of  that  echo  spiritualized  away 
into  heaven's  blue,  and  lost,  was  not  in  the  least  diminished  when 
my  eye,  starting  from  the  point  where  my  echo  sunk  away  into 
silence,  ranged  back  and  up  a  little,  and  there  caught  the  radiance 
and  glitter  of  Jungfrau  and  Silberhorn. 

Silberhorn  is  twelve  thousand  feet  high,  running  up  into  a 
conical  peak,  smooth,  white,  holy ;  there  being  absolutely  nothing 
there  but  the  solemn,  eternal  snow,  and  the  effulgence  of  the  sun ; 
no  flying  dust,  no  footprints,  no  stain  of  thaw,  no  stain  of  mortal 
breath ;  nothing,  I  say,  but  the  awful  whiteness  and  the  silence ; 
and  it  occurred  to  me  that  if  an  arch-angel  robed  in  heaven's 
purest  white  and  invested  by  all  conceivable  haloes  and  outshining 
glories,  should  descend  through  that  over-bending  sky  and  stand  on 
that  peak,  he  and  his  surroundings  would  make  one  congruous  and 
perfectly  harmonious  vision.  He  would  befit  the  place  and  the 
place  would  befit  him  ;  and  the  idea  of  any  mere  man  ever  standing 
up  there  with  the  soil  of  our  earthly  paths  on  his  feet  and  the  stain 
of  our  low  earthly  habits  on  his  soul  seemed  a  sacrilege  and  a  thing 


630  FOREIGN  LETTERS. 

not  to  be  suffered.  Nothing  in  Switzerland  has  impressed  me  more 
than  the  indescribable  whiteness  and  loneliness  and  the  fairly  celes- 
tial glory  of  these  summits  where  the  cold  is  unbroken  forever  and 
the  dry  white  snow  always  shines,  and  the  paths  and  works  of  man 
can  never  reach,  and  the  great  sky,  catching  the  solitariness  and 
splendor  of  the  mountain,  bends  over  all  with  a  corresponding 
splendor.  The  thing  is  full  of  the  moral  sublime,  and  must  not  be 
classified  among  simple  earthly  and  material  visions. 

THE   BLACK   AND   WHITE   LUTSCHINE   VALLEYS. 

Of  the  people  along  those  two  deep,  narrow,  unsunny  valleys 
that  we  wound  through  that  day,  the  less  said  the  better.  I  mean 
to  write  you  a  little  more  at  length  than  I  can  at  the  close  of  a  letter, 
concerning  the  common  people  in  Switzerland,  as  I  have  seen 
them.  I  should  not  want  to  live  along  the  Black  or  White  Luts- 
chine.  Nature  is  too  much  for  the  people  there.  The  only  really 
satisfying,  human  thing  that  we  saw  on  those  roads  was  an  occa- 
sional child.  A  boy  attended  our  carriage  for  miles  up  the  Grin- 
dehvald  road,  with  a  block  in  his  hand  to  put  behind  our  wheels 
when  the  horses  rested,  in  hopes  that  this  volunteer  service  would 
provoke  us  to  throw  him  a  little  money.  Well,  it  did,  and  if  he  had 
put  the  block  in  front  of  the  wheels  instead  of  behind,  we  should 
have  done  it  all  the  same  ;  because  he  had,  perhaps,  the  sweetest 
boy  face  that  we  met  in  all  our  journeyings.  He  said  nothing  to 
us,  and  was  so  retired  as  scarcely  to  answer  our  questions,  but  his 
uplook  into  the  carriage  now  and  then,  as  he  trudged  alongside,  was 
sufficient,  and  won  us  all.  How  he  came  there  I  do  not  know.  I 
did  not  see  any  one  fit  or  able  to  be  the  father  of  him,  or  the  mother 
either.  It  is  amazing  how  God  can  keep  the  world  full  of  such 
dear  prevailing  things  as  all  children  are  apt  to  be  when  young 
enough,  while  the  men  and  the  women,  the  reputed  fathers  and 
mothers  of  them,  are  such  comparatively  pitiable  specimens  (so 
many  of  them).  That  Black  Lutschine  boy  flowered  out  of  the 
cleft  of  some  rock  up  there,  I  verily  believe.  I  wish  I  had  him  all 
washed  up  and  out  at  play  in  our  goodly  Hartford,  so  that  he 
shouldn't  degenerate  into  an  Alp  peasant,  with  a  basket  larger  than 
himself  strapped  on  to  his  bent  back,  and  thick  wooden  shoes  on  his 
feet,  and  goitre  on  his  neck  about  the  size  of  a  watermelon,  and  a 
weary,  old,  brown  face,  and  a  drag  in  his  steps,  and  a  wooden  old 


FOREIGN  LETTERS.  631 

wife  to  help  him  dig  his  few  potatoes  and  lay  them  in.  I  wonder 
why  these  human  buds  all  about  the  world  are  permitted  to  try  to 
unfold  in  our  inclement  airs,  and  are  not  rather  caught  straight  up 
to  where  they  came  from  and  where  they  belong.  It  would  be  sore 
and  lonesome  wayfaring  for  us  old  grizzlies  if  they  were  taken,  but  it 
would  be  giving  them  a  better  chance,  one  thinks ;  moreover,  it 
would  stop  there  being  grizzlies  anymore.  All  of  which  I  submit  in 
great  humility,  not  knowing  how  to  manage  even  my  own  little 
affairs  very  well,  much  less  the  affairs  of  the  populous  creation,  but 
desiring  to  fling  out  a  few  things  now  and  then,  notwithstanding,  on 
the  principle  in  part,  that  "fools  rush  in  where  angels  fear  to  tread." 

THE   GEMMI   PASS   MULE. 

I  rode  a  mule,  and  my  friend  rode  a  horse,  the  mule  being  the 
softest  and  given  to  me  because  my  life  was  of  importance,  while 
his,  as  only  a  layman's  life,  was  comparatively  of  no  consequence  at 
all.  Still  I  should  have  rather  played  layman  and  taken  the  horse. 
A  mule  isn't  a  very  finely  organized  beast.  He  never  takes  a  hint 
until  you  bring  it  home  to  him  with  something  sharp.  He  has  a 
mind  of  his  own  and  goes  pretty  much  where  he  pleases.  He 
generally  walks  nearest  the  precipice,  so  that  if  you  fall  off  you  may 
make  a  sure  thing  of  it.  He  feels  you  pull  the  bridle  and  goes 
right  along  all  the  same.  He  turns  around  and  stops  every  now 
and  then  to  get  the  view  back  of  him — at  least  mine  did  that 
morning.  He  carries  his  head  low  and  professes  to  be  meek  when 
he  isn't.  He  doesn't  know  half  so  much  as  a  person  ought,  to  jus- 
tify him  in  acting  on  his  own  responsibility  as  much  as  he  does. 
In  fact,  to  speak  plainly,  he  comes  within  one  of  being  an  ass.  He 
may  be  a  Christian — I  do  not  profess  to  be  able  to  look  into  the 
heart — but  if  he  is,  I  prefer  to  ride  a  sinner. 

A   WALK   BY   THE   RHONE. 

And  now  I  submit  a  consideration  or  two  as  to  that  walk 
along  the  Rhone,  and  what  I  saw  and  what  I  felt  and  did  not 
feel.  No  doubt  you  think  it  was  obstinate  in  me  to  forsake 
all  things  and  cleave  unto  Zermatt  in  this  manner,  but  you  are 
mistaken.  I  did  it  as  a  girl  forsakes  her  father  and  mother  and 
cleaves  unto  her  lover,  by  an  inspired  instinct ;  and  though,  like 
her,  I  shed  a  few  natural  tears,  perhaps,  as  I  saw  that  carriage  drive 
off  with  that  misguided  fellow-mortal  in  it,  yet,  like  her  again,  my 


632  FOREIGN  LETTERS. 

heart  sung  a  love  song  within  me,  and  I  cooed  along  towards 
Zermatt  in  the  most  affectionate  and  satisfied  manner.  I  count 
that  solitary  walk  of  twelve  miles  to  Visp  that  day  among 
my  most  rememberable  bits  of  travel.  And  the  state  of  the  case 
was  this  : 

First,  I  knew  that  at  Zermatt,  a  day's  journey  from  Visp, 
Nature  has  tumbled  herself  up  in  a  way  to  astound  everybody  who 
goes  there  ;  and  an  intelligent  English  friend  in  New  York  had  told 
me  all  about  it  before  I  started  from  home,  and  had  put  into  me  so 
much  of  his  own  enthusiasm  on  the  subject  that  my  motto  ever 
since  had  been  :  "See  Zermatt  or  die." 

Secondly,  the  instant  I  was  alone  (it  was  the  first  time  since  I 
came  to  the  Continent)  I  began  to  be  twice  as  thoughtful  as  before, 
and  was  astonished  to  find  what  excellent  company  I  could  be  unto 
myself.  I  am  afraid  it  would  not  last  long,  but  for  twelve  miles  it 
was  rich.  I  walked  into  the  affections  of  the  mountains  and  they 
into  mine,  just  as  two  horses  put  their  heads  together  at  lazy  mid- 
day in  the  pasture  and  stand  motionless  and  sweetly  confidential, 
and,  without  speaking  a  word,  take  the  whole  sense  of  each  other. 
I  fellowshiped  the  people  along  the  road  in  a  very  interior  way, 
and  they  knew  what  it  all  meant  and  sidled  up  to  me.  Little  boys 
spoke  to  me.  Dogs  jumped  upon  me.  The  trees  and  I  hob-nobbed. 
The  voices  of  the  waterfalls  had  a  social  sound.  The  sun  soaked 
into  me  as  though  he  meant  it,  and  was  willing  to  rob  the  landscape 
to  supply  me.  The  dust  settled  on  my  shoes  still  and  friend-like, 
and  not  a  bit  as  though  it  meant  to  make  me  dirty.  A  beggar  sat 
by  the  roadside  and  did  not  look  up  as  I  passed,  knowing  by  the 
very  sound  of  my  footsteps  that  I  was  genial  and  he  needn't  be 
scared.  A  woman  was  stretched  out  whole  length  under  a  tree, 
with  splendid  large  feet  and  blue  woolen  stockings  heavy  enough 
for  working-day  trousers  ;  and  although  in  excess  of  prudence,  as  is 
becoming  in  a  woman,  she  raised  her  head  as  she  heard  the  sound 
of  some  one  approaching,  yet  the  moment  she  set  eyes  on  me  she 
dropped  back  again  and  was  as  content  as  though  I  had  been  her 
father.  In  fact  I  was  her  father.  I  was  the  father  of  the  whole 
Rhone  valley  that  day,  and  I  wouldn't  have  hurt  a  hair  of  its  head 
for  anything.  And  the  whole  valley  knew  it,  and  gathered  up  about 
me  like  the  creatures  about  Orpheus  when  he  played.  And,  you 
see,  if  I  had  not  been  alone  all  this  would  not  have  been.  I 
should  have  just  been  talking  to  that  fellow  in  the  carriage  all  the 


FOREIGN  LETTERS.  633 

way,  and  this  other  company  would  have  held  off,  seeing  me  pre- 
occupied. 

Thirdly,  the  scenes  and  sights  of  the  valley  were  delightful,  as 
I  have  hinted  already.  The  sky  had  not  a  cloud.  The  wind  was 
asleep.  The  golden  haze  filled  the  air.  The  fields  on  either  side 
were  full  of  people  getting  in  their  fall  crops — dear  old  crops, 
familiar  to  my  eyes  from  childhood,  the  self-same  ones,  as  sure  as 
you  live.  And  the  horses  and  cows,  unhitched  from  the  lumber- 
box-wagons,  were  standing  lopped  down  and  sleepy  under  the 
trees  to  which  they  were  hitched,  till  it  should  come  time  to  go 
home.  The  women  were  digging  and  the  like,  and  the  men  were 
digging  and  the  like,  and  the  children  were  quietly  lounging.  The 
mountains  on  my  right  were  close  by  and  lofty,  and  I  saw  flocks  of 
goats  along  their  rough  sides,  sometimes  a  hundred  at  once,  it 
seemed  to  me,  climbing  over  the  bowlders,  skipping  along  the  nar- 
row ledges,  and  nibbling  the  meagre  grass,  here  a  spire  and  there  a 
spire.  The  mountains  on  my  left  were  a  little  farther  off,  with  a 
splendid  frontage  to  the  south,  broad  and  high,  and  on  those  great 
slopes,  up  to  the  very  top,  there  were  grape-vines,  brown  and  beau- 
tiful and  rich,  suggestive  of  a  thousand  vintages  and  the  good  cheer 
of  a  thousand  years.  (I  composed  a  fine  ode  to  Bacchus  as  I 
passed  along.)  I  saw,  too,  a  Catholic  chapel  about  the  size  of  a 
narrow  engine-house,  curiously  meagre,  and  pasted  and  wafered  to 
the  side  of  the  precipice,  high  up.  I  found  that  it  was  a  point  of 
pilgrimage,  approached  by  twelve  stations,  so  called,  at  each  of 
which  stations,  were  pictured  representations  of  successive  stages  in 
the  Passion  of  our  Lord,  before  which  in  succession,  devout  pil- 
grims might  bow  on  their  way  up,  and  worship  and  remember. 
And  the  whole  thing  added  a  veritable  sanctity  to  the  region ;  and 
though  I  did  not  go  up,  yet  my  thoughts  went  up,  and  off  there  in 
the  middle  of  the  road  I  faced  about,  and  stood  and  thought  the 
matter  over,  and  then  and  there  joined  with  the  whole  redeemed 
earth  in  confessing  the  Saviour  of  all,  saying  in  my  heart,  in  those 
so  dear  words  of  the  English  Church  service,  which  I  have  wept 
over  many  a  time  as  the  worshipful  congregations  have  uttered 
them :  "  When  thou  hadst  overcome  the  sharpness  of  death,  thou 
didst  open  the  kingdom  of  heaven  to  all  believers."  But  I  could 
not  stay,  and  trudged  on.  I  went  through  several  sleepy  villages, 
which  were  rather  presentable.  I  talked  by  signs  with  a  little  boy, 
who  wanted  to  carry  my  knapsack  for  me.  I  saw  a  man  and  a 
*       4i 


634  FOREIGN  LETTERS. 

woman  hitched  together  to  a  loaded  cart,  which  they  were  dragging 
along  the  road ;  and  I  stopped  the  team  and  asked  it  how  far  it 
was  to  Visp,  and  they  told  me  by  counting  it  off  on  their  fingers, 
indicating  the  halves  by  showing  half  a  finger ;  and  if  that  team 
were  not  genuinely  glad  to  assist  me,  then  their  looks  belied  them. 
You  can't  get  all  the  humanity  out  of  human  nature,  if  you  do  hitch 
it  to  a  cart  and  pretend  it's  a  donkey.  I  saw  grand  snow-mountains 
all  the  while,  especially  ahead  of  me,  where  the  valley  seemed  to 
close  up  and  end ;  but  the  valley  did  not  end  there  at  all,  and  the 
mountain,  after  my  twelve  miles  of  travel,  was  just  as  far  off  and 
iust  as  near  "as  when  I  first  began,"  like  eternity  in  the  old  Metho- 
dist hymn — which  is  glorious  in  eternity,  but  discouraging  in  moun- 
tains. 


FROM   VISP  TO   ZERMATT. 

THE   SCENERY. 

Of  the  noble  scenery  of  the  valley,  it  is  impossible  to  say  too 
much.  Close  about  you  there  are  such  awful  uplifts  as  these  : 
Balferin,  twelve  thousand  three  hundred  feet  high;  the  Dom, 
fourteen  thousand  feet ;  Mischabel,  fifteen  thousand  feet ;  Matter- 
horn,  fifteen  thousand  feet;  Little  Matterhorn,  twelve  thousand 
feet;  Monte  Rosa,  fifteen  thousand  two  hundred  feet;  Gorner 
Grat,  ten  thousand  feet ;  Weisshorn,  fourteen  thousand  feet ;  besides 
several  more,  between  one  and  two  miles  in  the  air.  Remember 
these  are  not  far  away  from  you,  but  you  travel  in  their  very 
shadow,  you  see  their  tops,  you  feel  their  cold  breath,  you  walk 
softly  in  the  almost  insufferable  presence  of  their  sombre  majesty. 
And  when  I  say  almost  insufferable  presence,  I  speak  from  the 
stand-point  of  my  own  feelings  about  them  and  leave  other  people 
to  speak  from  the  stand-point  of  theirs.  I  was  overawed  by  them. 
There  was  something  so  akin  to  the  terrible  about  them  that  I  was 
unhappy,  and  felt  as  though  a  weight  was  taken  from  me  when  I 
returned  into  the  broad  valley  and  more  moderate  scenery  of  the 
Rhone.  This  impression  of  terror  was  deepened  by  my  sight  of 
glaciers  and  my  sense  of  the  almighty  forces  perpetually  at  work  in 
those  upper  solitudes.  I  looked  up  the  Weisshorn  glacier  on  my  way 
to  Zermatt,  and  as  the  clouds  then  stood,  it  seemed  to  come  down 
literally  out  of  the  sky.     I  saw  a  long,  lateral  ridge  of  ice  fairly  in 


FOREIGN  LETTERS.  635 

the  blue  sky  overhead,  turreted  and  pinnacled,  and  crevassed  and 
cold,  a  terrific  rampart,  on  which  and  in  the  midst  of  whose  magni- 
tudes and  irresistible  forces,  a  man  would  be  less  than  nothing.  It 
made  me  feel  small,  and  smaller  and  smaller  ;  and  as  I  remembered 
the  God  in  whose  hand  these  infinites  are  only  toys,  who  lifts  Mat- 
terhorn  as  though  it  were  but  the  small  dust  in  the  balance,  who 
rolls  his  earthquakes  under  these  heights  and  ranges,  and  rocks 
them  as  the  wind  rocks  wild  flowers ;  who,  in  fact,  bears  up  ten 
thousand  globes  of  seas  and  lands,  and  supports  them  from  eternity 
to  eternity  without  a  tremble  or  semblance  of  weariness,  I  felt 
afraid  and  wanted  to  get  where  I  could  be  reminded  of  his  love  and 
gentleness  once  more,  and  could  come  out  into  the  sunshine  of  the 
idea  that  this  amazing  and  frightful  omnipotence  is  under  a  pledge 
of  grace  to  every  living  creature,  even  to  every  bloom  of  the  field, 
and  every  wandering  bird. 


ZERMATT. 

A    HOSPITABLE   PRIEST. 

Arriving  at  Zermatt  just  at  nightfall,  I  found  the  two  hotels 
closed  and  nailed  up  for  the  season,  and  the  rest  of  Zermatt  nothing 
but  log-huts  and  the  like,  where  cows  hold  the  parlors  and  spare 
rooms,  and  a  man  hangs  up  where  he  can.  It  was  Saturday  night, 
too,  and  my  German  kindly  informed  me  (for  German  is  the 
language  of  that  region)  that  no  one  in  the  place  spoke  English ; 
and  I  knew  to  a  certainty  that  I  did  not  speak  German.  So  much 
for  traveling  in  the  Alps  in  October.  However,  under  a  sudden 
inspiration,  I  happened  to  think  of  the  Catholic  priest,  and  remem- 
bering that  that  class  do  not  ordinarily  have  a  very  numerous  wife 
and  family,  so  that  their  houses  are  not  very  overrunning,  and 
remembering  with  what  care  they  hunt  a  soul  among  the  mountains, 
I  considered  it  not  unlikely  that  the  Zermatt  father  would  take  me 
in  for  a  single  night.  So  I  said  "Priest"  to  my  German,  and  he 
led  the  way  to  the  rectory  and  went  in  and  told  my  story,  I  follow- 
ing and  standing  in  mute  appeal  while  he  did  it.  Whether  it  was 
his  German  or  my  face,  or  a  special  providence,  I  do  not  certainly 
know  j  but  the  round-faced,  good  father  motioned  to  me  with 
smiles  that  he  would  accept  me,  and  I  then  motioned  with  smiles 


636  FOREIGN  LETTERS. 

that  I  would  accept  him.  So  I  sat  down,  and  after  a  considerable 
period  of  silence,  his  silence  being  conducted  in  German  and  mine  in 
English,  I  took  from  my  pocket  three  little  lexicons  (German,  French 
and  English)  which  I  always  carry  with  me  in  these  foreign  coun- 
tries, not  to  speak  from,  but  in  hopes  that  if  I  am  shot  at,  the  bullet 
will  lodge  in  them.  And  these  lexicons  I  tumbled  down  before  him 
in  hopes  that  he  would  find  something  in  them  that  he  could  say. 
After  a  few  minutes'  search,  he  looked  hard  at  me  and  said  : 
"Coffee?"  I  shook  my  head  for  "No."  In  the  course  of  five 
minutes  more  of  search,  he  faced  me  again  and  said  :  "Eggs?"  I 
said  "No,"  and  then  proceeded  to  shake  my  head  steadily  for  the 
next  three  minutes,  which  he  soon  understood  to  signify  that  I  did 
not  want  anything  at  all.  So  that  was  settled.  Pretty  soon,  and 
after  a  little  skirmishing,  I  pointed  to  myself  and  said:  "Priest." 
He  evidently  thought  I  lied.  Then  I  pointed  to  myself  and  said  : 
"American  priest,"  but  he  looked  me  over  and  didn't  find  the 
proper  ear-marks  of  any  sort  of  priest,  and  was  not  a  bit  moved  by 
what  I  had  said.  He  knew  I  was  an  impostor.  His  face  showed 
that  that  was  his  opinion  of  me.  It  was  unfortunate  that  I  had  used 
the  word  priest,  perhaps.  At  last  I  raised  my  voice,  pointed  to 
myself  the  third  time,  and  said,  "Protestant  priest,"  and  instantly 
he  sprang  to  his  feet  and  took  my  hand,  and  shook  it  in  a  prolonged 
and  cordial  manner.  We  had  now  reached  open  sailing,  so  I  took 
out  my  passport,  written  in  French,  which  he  could  understand, 
and  gave  it  to  him,  and  thus  he  got  my  name  and  exact  place  of 
residence,  and  a  general  assurance  that  I  amounted  to  something. 
From  that  we  went  on  the  whole  evening,  talking  through  the  lexi- 
cons, and  gesturing  and  laughing  when  we  failed  altogether  to 
understand  each  other ;  his  housekeeper,  a  powerful  woman,  paus- 
ing occasionally  in  the  middle  of  the  floor  as  she  passed  through,  to 
witness  the  show.  At  last  I  started  for  bed,  assuring  him  by  point- 
ing to  the  figure  VI  on  my  watch  that  I  should  leave  for  St.  Nikolaus 
at  that  hour  in  the  morning,  and  saying  to  him  that  he  would  be  in 
bed,  by  pointing  to  his  bed  standing  there  in  the  room  and  laying 
down  my  head  in  my  hand  and  shutting  my  eyes.  And  as  I 
thought  I  might  not  see  him  in  the  morning,  I  filled  my  hand  with 
coin  and  extended  it  to  him  open,  that  he  might  take  what  he  liked. 
He  hesitated  and  took  a  single  piece.  But  I  still  held  it  out  and 
he  took  one  more.  And  then  I  shut  it,  thinking  the  fun  had  gone 
far  enough — just  far  enough.    I  slept  well  enough  in  his  little  house, 


FOREIGN  LETTERS.  637 

all  browned  by  the  weather,  with  brown  boards  inside,  and  great 
stones  on  the  roof,  and  the  fairest  of  white  curtains  to  keep  Matter- 
horn  and  the  rest  of  them  from  looking  right  into  my  face  while  I 
was  asleep  ;  and  in  the  early  morning,  after  giving  him  my  card  and 
taking  his,  I  put  out  into  the  cold  and  windy  valley,  he  following 
me  to  the  gate  with  his  prayer-book  in  his  hand  (as  his  little  church 
in  the  yard  was  already  calling  him  and  his  villagers  to  early 
prayer),  and  bidding  me  adieu  several  times  over;  I  liking  him, 
and  he,  I  hope,  liking  me  ;  I  having  testified  of  my  confidence  in 
him  by  appealing  to  him  in  my  necessity,  and  he  having  signified 
his  confidence  in  me  by  opening  to  me  his  doors ;  he  thinking  me 
a  poor  heretic,  I  suppose,  and  I  thinking  him  one,  though  I  thought 
he  was  a  good-looking  one,  and  did  not  care  a  brass  farthing,  in 
fact,  whether  he  was  a  heretic  or  not,  just  at  the  moment  when  I 
felt  the  pressure  of  his  kindly  hand  in  farewell,  and  took  a  final  look 
at  the  chimney  of  his  old  house  as  I  went  over  the  hill.  I'm  afraid 
the  fellow  will  get  into  heaven  in  spite  of  his  Catholicism  ;  and 
Zermatt  being  fifty-five  hundred  feet  above  the  level  of  the  sea,  he 
is  about  half  way  there  now.  The  other  half  will  be  the  tug  for 
him,  but  he'll  make  it,  I'm  inclined  to  think. 


Extract  from  a  Letter  to  the  Fourth  Church,  Hartford, 
December  6,  1868. 

Those  of  you  who  know  me  best  will  be  able  to  surmise,  with- 
out a  word  from  me,  with  what  greediness  I  have  received  all  things 
in  these  strange  foreign  lands — their  arts,  their  usages,  their  natural 
scenery,  and  all  the  rest.  Were  I  to  write  a  volume,  I  could  not  tell 
you  all.  I  will  take  time  only  to  say,  that  I  have  greatly  enjoyed  the 
religious  services  of  different  kinds  which  I  have  been  permitted  to 
attend.  As  sure  as  you  live,  my  beloved  friends,  the  very  Gospel 
which  I  tried  so  hard  to  get  before  you  during  the  months  before  I 
came  away,  the  doctrine  of  Christ  crucified  for  lost  men,  I  mean,  is 
preached  for  substance  in  all  these  lands,  by  ten  thousand  voices. 
I  knew  it  before,  to  be  sure  ;  but  now  I  have  heard  it  and  know  it 
twice  as  well  as  before,  and  I  cannot  tell  you  how  much  I  have  been 
moved  by  it. 

I  do  not  deny  that  the  Gospel  is  ofttimes  perverted  here,  and  I 


638  FOREIGN  LETTERS. 

suppose  that  if  I  only  understood  these  Continental  languages,  1 
should  find  that  some  services  which  now  please  me,  and  only  please 
me,  would  not  be  quite  so  acceptable  ;  but  as  things  are,  I  can  enter 
a  Romanist,  Greek  or  Protestant  service,  any  Sabbath;  and  be  thor- 
oughly edified  and  be  frequently  melted  ;  because  the  foremost 
thing  in  all  the  pomps  of  religious  ceremony  that  pass  before  my 
eyes,  is  that  which  is  so  well  expressed  in  the  English  church-ser- 
vice— "When  thou  hadst  overcome  the  sharpness  of  death  thou 
didst  open  the  kingdom  of  heaven  to  all  believers."  Christ  died 
for  us,  Christ  died  for  us,  and  through  Him  we  have  eternal  life  they 
all  say ;  and  in  French  services,  services  in  Greek,  services  in  Ger- 
man, no  matter  what,  I  do  not,  with  all  my  ignorance,  fail  to  catch 
every  now  and  then,  the  name  which  is  above  every  name,  and  the 
hallelujahs  unto  that  great  name  ;  and  when  the  Greek  worshiper 
crosses  himself  and  bows  with  his  forehead  to  the  pavement,  I 
understand  perfectly  well  that  it  means,  "  When  (on  the  cross)  thou 
hadst  overcome  the  sharpness  of  death,  thou  didst  open  the  kingdom 
of  heaven  to  all  believers." 

And  I  see  Christ's  precious  face  and  form  on  the  pictured  walls 
and  if  I  see  the  form  of  his  mother  also  added,  I  straightway  remem- 
ber the  words  of  the  Angel  in  the  Scripture — "  Hail  thou  that  art 
highly  favored ;  blessed  art  thou  among  women,"  and  am  willing 
that  the  mother  of  our  Lord  should  stand  in  some  eminence  through- 
out all  generations ;  and  if  I  see  the  figures  of  apostles  and  saints 
and  martyrs  standing  about  rather  more  thickly  than  I  have  been 
used  to  see  them,  I  say  to  myself: 

"  They  do  not  stand  there  in  their  own  right  and  in  their  own 
dignity,  but  in  the  name  and  to  the  praise  of  Christ,"  yes,  "  the 
glorious  company  of  the  Apostles  praise  Thee ;  the  goodly  fellow- 
ship of  the  Prophets  praise  Thee  ;  the  noble  army  of  martyrs  praise 
Thee  ;"  and  really,  Christian  brethren,  is  it  not  sublime,  this  magni- 
ficent unity  of  Christendom  around  the  cross  of  the  common  Saviour? 
In  what  a  fellowship  we  stand  !  What  an  august  kingdom  has  been 
founded  here  on  the  desolate  earth  !  What  millions  have  been 
gathered  into  it !  What  hosts  redeemed  by  Christ's  most  precious 
blood,  do  stand  even  now  on  Mount  Zion  above ;  and  what  added 
hosts  in  the  course  of  time's  long  ages  shall  be  gathered  in  !  Some- 
how I  rejoice  in  these  things  for  the  last  year  or  more,  beyond  all 
my  previous  rejoicings.  I  start  into  Italy  to-morrow  to  look  upon 
her  scenery,  and  walk  through  her  galleries  of  art,  more  to  see  if  I 


FOREIGN  LETTERS. 


639 


cannot  somewhere  find  some  picture,  painted  by  the  hand  of  some 
immortal  master,  which  shall  fulfill  all  my  yearning  and  tearful  feel- 
ing touching  the  "Lamb  of  God  which  taketh  away  the  sin  of  the 
world,"  than  Tor  anything  else.  If  I  could  anywhere  find  his  face 
set  forth  in  its  whole  mingled  majesty  and  tenderness,  so  that  that 
which  I  feel  I  could  also  see,  I  should  wish  to  abide  by  it  forever 
and  never  go  back  to  my  country  any  more.  Well,  most  likely  I 
shall  not  find  him  in  any  place  on  the  earth,  but  must  content  my- 
self with  waiting  for  the  day  when  he  shall  reveal  himself  among 
his  saints,  and  with  hoping  that  I  may  be  of  the  number  who  shall 
walk  with  him  in  white  and  see  his  glory. 


A   FRAGMENT. 

Heaven  is  rest  and  joy,  and  it  requires  the  heart  to  interpret 
that,  and  grasp  its  immeasurable  meaning.  0,  when  I  am  tired — 
when  my  body  is  unstrung  and  my  soul  is  jaded,  when  my  hopes 
flag,  and  my  ambitions  flicker  in  their  socket,  when  the  night  does 
not  refresh  me  and  the  morning  does  not  cheer  me,  when  the  song 
of  birds  is  heavy  music,  and  all  the  trees  of  the  field  seem  chastened, 
and  the  brooks  are  weary  and  creep  and  gurgle  and  lament ;  when 
the  beauty  of  women  is  vanity  to  my  eyes,  and  I  can  see  no  dignity 
in  the  faces  of  men,  when  the  friends  of  my  youth  are  scattered  and 
dead,  and  my  eyes  are  evermore  striving  to  look  beyond  the  distant 
horizon  as  for  some  country  far  away  ;  when  long-gone  forms  crowd 
my  memory,  the  young,  the  old,  the  beautiful,  the  reverend ;  when 
my  sympathies  are  pensive  and  retrospective,  and  I  live  with  the 
dead  whom  I  knew,  more  than  with  the  living  whom  I  know ;  when 
the  winds  complain  and  sob  at  my  casement  all  the  day ;  when  the 
love  and  the  hate,  and  the  efforts  and  delights  of  men  seem  small 
and  empty — O,  when  I  am  tired  and  sad  and  worn  out — I  know 
what  my  God  intended  when  he  said,  "  rest  and  joy  in  Heaven." 
Amen. 


Date  Due 

S  24  A 

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<f 

i 

